High-Tech Robbery : A Boom in Bogus Tapes, CDs and Videos Has Police Redoubling Anti-Piracy Efforts

Mario Yagoda and the boys have this framed platinum record hanging proudly on the wall of their downtown office: Funny thing is, not one of the boys can carry a tune, pluck a string or blow even a discordant note.

And Yagoda? He plays a very bad trombone at best.

The silvery-colored record from the Recording Industry Assn. wasn’t awarded for musical achievement but for efforts by this crew of Glendale police detectives to stem the illegal trade of pirated music cassettes and compact discs throughout the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere.

In the past two years, Glendale’s six detectives in the bunco-forgery unit have conducted several major stings--mostly of local, mom-and-pop retailers selling pirated music, as well as numerous video store owners dealing in counterfeit rental tapes. Detectives have also shut down several production labs where counterfeit movies and cassettes are reproduced for black market distribution.

Glendale police are among several local agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, working with both the music and motion picture industries to help erase the spread of unlawfully produced cassettes, CDs and videotapes. As music and film technology advances, so too have the efforts to rip off legitimate artists and companies with often badly produced counterfeits that have flooded the legitimate video and music markets, authorities say.

Each year, pirated materials cost the recording industry an estimated $1.2 billion worldwide, according to the Recording Industry Assn. The Motion Picture Assn. of America (MPAA), a trade group representing seven major film studios--including Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony and MCA-Universal--estimates their combined worldwide losses at $2 billion annually to such film copyright rip-offs.

And despite recent publicity on the growing international black markets in countries such as China and Thailand, officials say they are equally concerned about such losses across the United States, including Southern California.

Nationwide, the recording industry says it loses $600 million a year to music piracy, according to association statistics. Filmmakers say they lose $220 million annually in domestic sales due to criminal copyright theft, according to the MPAA.

For bogus cassettes and CDs, the market usually consists of small, privately owned record stores and flea market outlets. Counterfeit movies usually reach the public through smaller rental stores, rather than through large chains, police and industry officials say.

“The problem is monumental and growing,” said David Dolson, supervisor of the MPAA’s anti-piracy office in Encino. “Every year we seize more and more videotapes and make more and more cases. It’s a little like street prostitution. The cops work and work and work to eradicate it. But what they succeed in doing is making prostitutes look over their shoulder before turning a trick. The film and record pirates are the same way.”

The arrests have earned detectives a few nicknames: They’re called “Flick Dicks.” And “Disc Dicks.”

“It’s satisfying to put a stop to this kind of crime,” said Yagoda, 31, a three-year veteran of bunco-forgery. “Because the real loser here is the consumer who pays real dollars for inferior quality movies and tapes. And when it comes right down to it, we’re all consumers.”

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Meanwhile, the arrests continue to mount:

Authorities in 1992 convicted a Glendale man of illegally importing and distributing tens of thousands of bootleg copies of live rock recordings. The scam, officials said, involved illegally taping concerts and then producing compact disc versions of the music in a foreign country. After packaging, the bootlegs were then imported and sold domestically at a reduced price.

Police confiscated 10,000 illegal CDs at the man’s residence and seized records showing he had sold another 20,000 to local music outlets. The CDs carried bogus names for legitimate groups. For example, Led Zeppelin was marketed as Pigs in Zen; the group The Replacements was billed as Substitute and Nirvana was simply Cobain.

In July of this year, Los Angeles police arrested three people in a raid of a Sun Valley home termed a major counterfeiting factory--seizing 4,084 illegal videos, 31 videocassette recorders used to duplicate the films, and 2,000 blank videocassettes. At the time of the bust, all 31 VCRs were duplicating a single tape of the first-run film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” starring Johnny Depp.

“They had all these machines running at once, in the bedroom and the living room and the kitchen. Two hours later, after one running of the film, they had 30 new pirated copies,” Dolson said.

Law enforcement officials are aiming their efforts not only at the production end of the piracy business but also at flea market vendors and small retailers who see quick profits in the sale of both music and movie bootlegs.

In June, 1993, Glendale police seized 46,000 illegal cassettes of Arabic music shipped from New York City and sold in a local international food store, Yagoda said.

Four months later, in the largest seizure of pirated compact discs in Southern California history, detectives confiscated 8,700 from the home of another Glendale man they said had peddled 20,000 illegal discs over the previous two years.

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Charles Lawhorn, an attorney who heads the Recording Industry Assn.’s anti-piracy office in Southern California, said illegally produced music cassettes account for the industry’s biggest counterfeiting headache.

Most bogus cassettes are both produced and sold domestically, while compact discs are usually produced abroad and then sold here at home. Cassettes also reach a larger audience, he said. In the last year, however, the cassette piracy problem has taken a slight turn for the better, a point officials attribute to increased surveillance. In 1993, officials seized 2 million counterfeit cassettes, down from 2.5 million in 1992, officials say.

Still, the counterfeit wars are far from won.

“Illegal reproductions cost legitimate retailers 35% to 40% of their business,” Lawhorn said. “As music technology has moved from records to eight-tracks to cassettes to compact discs, the forgery artists have been there every step of the way.”

For illegal videos, authorities say, the real money is to be made in rentals rather than sales--mostly at small, independently owned stores that rent the counterfeit copies for as little as 99 cents per rental. “Last year, we raided 10 to 20 stores in the Valley alone,” Dolson said. “But these guys are getting smart to us. At one store in Reseda, we showed at night to collect the pirated videos as they were returned by customers.

“But nobody was coming into the store. One officer found the guy’s wife standing outside with this big plastic bag. She was collecting the videos as they were returned so we wouldn’t get to them.”

Recidivism is rampant in the illegal video market despite stiff penalties. First-time offenders can receive up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. “People pay their fines, do their days in jail and then go right ahead and do it again,” Dolson said. “So there must be money in it.”

The MPAA now has a toll-free hot line number to report suspected pirated tapes. On its 1-800-NOCOPYS line, the association pays rewards up to $15,000 for tips that result in convictions.

Meanwhile, counterfeiters hungrily look for new movies to copy. Especially children’s films. And that makes legitimate movie makers mad. “Disney takes this kind of crime very seriously, as all the movie companies do,” said Judy Denenholz, a vice president in charge of the anti-piracy office for Walt Disney Studios.

One counterfeiting trend is the use of camcorders to steal first-run movies right off the screen. “We’ve seen a lot of bogus ‘Lion King’ tapes,” Denenholz said. “When we see a camcorder reproduction passed off as a Disney film, it’s just devastating to us.

“Because we go through extreme quality controls, especially with animated films. And the quality of these counterfeit versions is just terrible. You can hear the audience laughter and can see people get up for popcorn. They’re a joke.”

Disney alone loses $100 million annually in film rip-offs worldwide. “We at Disney are seeing a substantial rise in all kinds of film piracy,” Denenholz said. “People are calling us to report they’re seeing more and more of this bogus stuff.”

That’s where Yagoda and the boys come in. They’ve got their feelers out there in the community--in Glendale and elsewhere--looking to bust their next greedy counterfeiter.

They’ve got their platinum record, now they’re going for a second one.

“It’s a dirty little profitable game for these forgery artists,” he said. “But sooner or later, we’re gonna get them.

“We’re gonna put an end to their little song and dance.”