Thirty-one people were arrested and hundreds of thousands of illegal copies — each with a “legal” street value of £10 to £40 — were seized when 135 police officers and investigators carried out seventeen simultaneous raids.

Officers said they found at least five big “factories”, where copying equipment with multiple disc drives, or burners, capable of producing hundreds of digital discs an hour, was confiscated. It was the largest crackdown on counterfeiting and benefit fraud in Britain.

More than 90 burners were found in Kirkby, near Liverpool, taking up most of a two-bedroom terraced house.

Illegal steroids, more than 500 pornographic DVDs and at least one firearm were also recovered. Of the thirty-one arrested in Kirkby, and Sefton and Skelmersdale in Lancashire, seven were released after being questioned. Those still in custody included three girls aged 16 and 17, a man aged 69 and a woman aged 62. Six men aged 20 to 41 and a woman aged 52 were also being held.

At least three quarters of those who were arrested yesterday are thought to have been fraudulently claiming payments, amounting in total to more than £2,500 a week.

About 70 per cent of the illegal copies were destined for sale in Stanley Dock and Walton Market, the most notorious piracy hotspots in Liverpool. The rest would be sold to local sellers. About half the confiscated discs contained the latest cinema releases or films not yet legally available on DVD. Recorded music accounted for 40 per cent.

Among the haul were Steven Spielberg’s Munich, Syriana, starring George Clooney, the Australian western The Proposition, and The Pink Panther, a comedy that is due in cinemas today. Illegal copies of the latest Xbox and PlayStation 2 and PSP video games, with a legal value of about £40 each, were recovered.

Those arrested are expected to face multiple criminal fraud charges. Chief Inspector Greg Wood, of Merseyside Police, said that pirated material presented a moral issue. “There are too many people who don’t consider the purchase of counterfeit goods as a problem,” he said. “But they are inadvertently subsidising huge amounts of organised crime across the country — anything from drugs to benefit fraud.”

COST OF FAKING IT

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