The Stuttgart public prosecutors‘ office began investigating a 60-year-old suspect from the Esslingen region of Germany in cooperation with the Reutlingen district police in 2015. When his premises were searched in January 2016, investigators found some 3,000 boxes with pirated copies of CDs, DVDs, and records as well as corresponding covers and booklets.
As the officials estimated that the counterfeiting offense was large in scale, the state office of criminal investigation in Baden-Württemberg (LKA BW) took over the case. In the course of further investigations, police officers searched warehouses around Schwäbisch Hall and Göppingen as well as CD pressing plants in Germany and Poland. Altogether they confiscated some 8,000 boxes with one and a half to two million illegal items of sound storage media. These included the works of numerous well-known artists and bands, including Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.
According to previous findings, the alleged counterfeiter had the CD copies pressed in Germany and in Poland. He sold the media in Germany and neighbouring countries at CD and record expos as well as online. The suspect has been in investigatory custody since September 2016 for commercial, unauthorised usage of protected intellectual property and other violations of intellectual property law. The state office of criminal investigations has established a six-person investigation group for the case.
