3:06pm Wednesday 18th November 2009
A MILL Hill man has been jailed for 21 months for his part in selling counterfeit rock and roll memorabilia to unsuspecting members of the public.
Seng Lai Lau, 48, of Hale Lane, admitted selling thousands of fake products from the likes of the Rolling Stones, Green Day, AC/DC and the Arctic Monkeys at Harrow Crown Court last Friday.
He also faces losing thousands of pounds after a confiscation order was made against him.
He pleaded guilty to the wholesale trade in counterfeit goods alongside his employee Marios Kyriacou, of Littlehampton, after being rumbled by Brent trading standards officers.
Kyriacou, 46, was handed a seven-month sentence, suspended for two years, and given an electronic tag to stop him leaving his house between 8pm and 6am.
Passing sentence, His Honour Judge Madge, said that Lau was the main driving force behind the enterprise, while Kyriacou was just an employee.
He also stated that Lau was close to the manufacture and import of all of the counterfeit items and that his motivation was one of pure financial gain.
Speaking after the case, Bill Bilon, Director Brent and Harrow Trading Standards Service, said:”I am absolutely delighted with the outcome.
“This is another example of the courts sending out the message to counterfeiters that these types of offences are serious and will be severely punished. “Not only have the men been sentenced to custodial sentences, but their ill-gotten gains will very likely be stripped from them.”
Officers were first tipped off to the illicit trade in April 2007, when someone made a complaint about another company run by Lau from the warehouse in Park Royal.
In June 2007 more than 158,000 items including t-shirts, wrist bands and wallets were seized during a raid by officers after test purchases confirmed them to be counterfeit.
When officers returned to serve court papers in August 2008 they found the showroom and warehouse was once again packed with fake goods and seized another 46,000 items.
In court it was agreed they had a value between £85,000- £100,000.
Experts looked at 96,000 pages of documents on computers seized at the warehouse which showed the pair had designed and ordered the goods from Lau's associates in China.
Kyriacou had previously merged his business, which dealt in the same type of goods, with Lau's and some of the packaging contained the mark of the former business.
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