Police Seize Records, Tapes at Swap Meet : Bootleg music: More than 10,000 illegal recordings and other merchandise valued at about $100,000 were confiscated in the Buena Park raid.

In one of the largest seizures of bootleg recordings on the West Coast, police on Sunday raided a rock music swap meet and confiscated more than 10,000 illegal records, tapes and other goods valued at about $100,000.

Fifteen vendors were issued citations for allegedly selling the merchandise, which ranged from videos of recent Paul McCartney concerts overseas to cassette recordings of 20-year-old Beatles performances, police said.

Buena Park police have been investigating the monthly meet, located in a banquet room at the Sequoia Athletic Club at Beach Boulevard and Orangethorpe Avenue, for six months. They were tipped by a national association representing the recording industry.

“This is one of the biggest collections of bootlegs we’ve ever seen,” said Steven D’Onofrio, anti-piracy director of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, who helped police at Sunday’s raid. “And it’s been going on for quite a while.”

The show--the largest of its type on the West Coast--attracts 150 vendors and several thousand customers on the fourth Sunday of every month.

Twenty Buena Park police officers made 13 undercover buys starting at about 10 a.m. Sunday, then announced over a microphone that the show was shut down, telling vendors to remain in place while their goods were searched. About 1,000 customers who had paid a $3 cover charge were told to leave.

“The record industry came to us and showed us how to identify the bootleg tapes,” Police Sgt. Terry Branum said. “Some of them are pretty blatant, with the titles handwritten on them.”

D’Onofrio said he hopes that the raid will lead detectives to the manufacturers of some of the recordings. He said the Recording Industry Assn. sends its own investigators to shows around the nation, then tips police.

“Southern California is the hotbed of piracy for the whole country,” he said.

Sunday’s raid was one of the largest on the West Coast involving retail sales of bootleg recordings, but millions of dollars worth of merchandise has been seized at recent raids on manufacturers of similar products.

Last month, about $2.6 million worth of bootleg tapes were confiscated from a factory in Fullerton that was producing about 30,000 cassettes a week with sophisticated dubbing machines. In August, police raided an even larger factory in Chino.

Buena Park police Sunday filled a truck with the albums, cassette tapes, compact discs, videotapes and other recordings, which were being sold for $10 to $20 apiece. Some were actually labeled “bootleg,” while most had handprinted or typed labels. Police also seized television sets and videocassette recorders, “anything they were using to sell the merchandise,” Branum said.

Ironically, a sign posted at the door said “No Bootlegs Allowed.” Police said that the promoter of the event will not be cited and that the monthly shows can continue.

Vendors surprised by the raid said they knew that some of their merchandise was illegal but that it was a harmless activity that amounts to little more than a hobby.

“The people who were here are collectors. There’s no serious money in this. Maybe $200 on a day like this,” said one vendor who lost a couple of hundred records in the seizure. “The record companies aren’t losing money on some 20-year-old bootleg recording of the Beatles at Shea Stadium.”

The vendors said they were filling a void in people’s collections. Most of the recordings were made at concerts of which no live recordings have been released.

“Who is it hurting?” said one vendor, who lost about $5,000 worth of goods. “The people who buy these are collectors who already have bought all the artist’s albums.”

But D’Onofrio said the music industry loses “hundreds of millions of dollars each year” to piracy, bootlegging and counterfeiting.

The estimated 130 vendors who were selling legitimate wares complained that they lost a full day of business because police shut down the show and kept them there for several hours. Each paid $45 to rent space for an 8-foot table of merchandise.

“I lost $300 to $500 in sales today,” said David James, 21, of Costa Mesa. “I thought it was ridiculous. There’s better things for police to do.”

Most of the citations are expected to lead to misdemeanor charges, although anyone with more than 1,000 illegal recordings can face a felony charge, D’Onofrio said.