Counterfeit DVD bust in Bangkok

Any visitor to Southeast Asia will notice fairly quickly that the bootleg CD and DVD market is big business. Outside department stores, one would be hard-pressed to find a legitimate disc. The Thai capital of Bangkok is one of the more notorious havens for the production of the illegal discs, though there is rarely any danger of displaying the wares on the streets.

Nonetheless, once in a while examples must be made, and Thai police went big when they seized 100,000 counterfeit DVDs from a shopping mall in the Bangkok neighbourhood of Ma Bon Khrong this past Wednesday.

The owner of the shop, Manee Maitree was arrested and so were the seven people that worked for her. Police seized, besides the 100,000 discs, a printer for making movie covers, bank accounts and customer lists.

Maitree confessed to police that she had been engaged in the business for over a year, and sold the pirated movies to both retail customers and as wholesale to other shops in the city.