- Police seized 6,498 counterfeit records in the UK
- Fake LPs are big business, with big price tags
- Be very careful when you're buying valuable vinyl
UK police have seized counterfeit vinyl worth over a quarter of a million pounds in Luton, England. The City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit, PIPCU for short, says that the 6,498 records it took from the counterfeiters are the equivalent of £259,920 (about $351,370) in retail sales.
That's a lot of money. And it's also a lot of records. Aren't vinyl manufacturers supposed to be at full capacity thanks to Pokémon-esque "gotta catch 'em all!" releases of multiple collectible vinyl versions by super-popular artists?
In short: yes, but also no.
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Vinyl villains aren't jumping the queue
First of all, the supply problems are largely solved thanks to a lot of investment in manufacturing capacity; as we've reported, Taylor Swift isn't stopping your Record Store Day specials from being made too.
And secondly, any capacity problems wouldn't be relevant here anyway, because the fakes most likely aren't coming out of the same pressing plants as legitimate Olivia Rodrigo or Record Store Day releases.
Many reputable pressing plants require documentation to prove that you're not a pirate, a counterfeiter or anyone else looking to duplicate something dodgy. So many counterfeiters set up their own pressing plants instead.
For example in 2024, PIPCU said it had seized 18 tonnes of evidence during a raid on just one counterfeit pressing plant in London. That single operation had four pressing machines for making vinyl.
And it's not the only secret underground record factory: according to the British Phonographic Industry, between 2020 and 2024 the organization delisted £26 million of fake vinyl from digital platforms and seized £316,050 in counterfeit products.
It's interesting to crunch the numbers, because if you look at this latest raid the average value per record works out at about £40, which is the going rate for ordinary LP releases. However, the UK Intellectual Property Office said last year that fake versions of LPs were priced as high as £1,000, because of course rare records can command much higher prices than the latest Harry Styles LP.
It's not surprising that counterfeit vinyl exists; worldwide, vinyl is a billion-dollar business, and as long as there are lots of buyers there are going to be people trying to rip them off. So it's important to be very careful when you're buying records from a source you don't already know and trust.
According to the IPO, tell-tale signs of a counterfeit record include poor quality production; new records that aren't shrink-wrapped; missing barcodes or poorly printed outers; catalogue numbers that come up as "unofficial" in Discogs; and private sellers with multiple copies of the same record, especially if that record is rare.
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