Former magistrate found guilty of selling counterfeit DVDs

A 71-year-old former magistrate has been sentenced to six months' imprisonment suspended for a year after admitting copying and selling counterfeit CDs and DVDs.

Coventry City Council's Trading Standards, which brought the prosecution agasint Gordon Harris, is also asking the court to impose a £13,000 fine on him, under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA).

Harris has been in trouble with the city's Trading Standards investigative team before for producing counterfeit car workshop manual DVDs for cars such as Peugeot and Jaguar.

Trading Standards said that he sold around 3,500 of these DVDs between 2006 and 2009, making an estimated profit of around £3,000. He pleaded guilty on 1 September to three offences under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 at Warwick Crown Court.

This law, which also covers the civil offence of making illegal copies of copyright material for personal use, makes it a criminal offence if the person has created counterfeit goods to sell or possess these in the course of a business.

Trading Standards told us that the latest prosecution was for producing around 50 made-to-order CDs. His son, Lee Harris, was sentenced to 12 months in jail in May this year for similar offences, and has been fined £30,380 under a POCA settlement.

Coventry City Council's Trading Standards manager, Hamish Simmonds, said: "Selling cheap fakes not only rips off consumers but affects legitimate businesses that support the local economy.

"Mr Harris should have known better, being someone who upheld the law as a Magistrate in the past and who had previously been made aware of the wrong-doing."