Deep cuts: how one Londoner’s fake vinyl empire sheds light on ‘industrial scale’ fraud

Thousands of knock-off records worth a fortune are being seized in the UK by anti-counterfeit police stings

From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire was built on fakery.

On Friday, the man behind the biggest-ever UK case of producing fraudulent vinyl, who sold counterfeit copies of records by some of the world’s biggest artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar , was jailed.

Ahmed, a 40-year-old father of three from Southall, west London , pleaded guilty to two charges of breach of artists’ copyright, and acquiring and using criminal property. On the first count, Judge Darren Reed sentenced him to two years and eight months in prison, while the more serious second charge led to a custodial penalty of three and a half years. The sentences will be served concurrently, meaning that the second will dictate the time Ahmed spends in prison.

In a sentencing hearing at Inner London crown court on Friday, the judge highlighted the “sophisticated and planned nature of the enterprise”, and the fact that Ahmed had caused “wider harm to the music industry”.

O perating under the company names Phoenix of Vinyl and Paragon Music, Ahmed produced counterfeit vinyl albums that he supplied to record shops or sold directly to consumers through online platforms such as Discogs and eBay. In 2025, eBay removed about 7.9m potentially counterfeit or prohibited items from the platform.

A spokesperson said: “Counterfeits are strictly prohibited on eBay. Where listings violate eBay policies, we act swiftly to remove them and may take action against the seller’s account.” Discogs did not respond to a request for comment.

Phoenix of Vinyl was no minor operation. When police raided Ahmed’s factory, they found 15,000 records. His previous business endeavours, around which there is no suggestion of criminality, had focused on takeaway food and bodybuilding supplements. But the booming vinyl industry appears to have lured him into the illicit market.

In 2025, UK vinyl sales increased by 13.3% to 7.6m units, maintaining 18 years of constant growth. Led by Swift’s 2025 release of The Life of a Showgirl, the total retail value of vinyl in the US that year reached over $1bn for the first time in four decades .

Rising prices of records inevitably followed this increased demand: some high-profile albums, particularly in “limited edition” versions, are now regularly priced at about £40.

While “bootlegs” of rare and unreleased material have long been part of the music landscape – originally on vinyl and now largely eclipsed by the internet – Ahmed was part of a growing underground industry making counterfeit copies of officially released albums. Over the last two years, the music business umbrella organisation the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says it has been involved in the execution of 43 search warrants centred on illegal counterfeit vinyl and CDs, and seized about 600,000 items estimated to have a street value of up to £8m.

The fakes can be easily spotted when it comes to particular artists.