London Man Jailed 3½ Years Over £2.7M Scheme Selling Fake Taylor Swift, Coldplay Records

A London man has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison after running an industrial-scale counterfeit vinyl operation that generated more than £2.7 million in sales of fake records by artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar.

Rehan Ahmed, 40, of Southall in west London, was sentenced Friday, Sept. 18, at Inner London Crown Court after admitting copyright offenses and acquiring and using criminal property. City of London Police described the investigation as the largest seizure of counterfeit vinyl records in U.K. history.

Ahmed operated the business between 2017 and 2024 from a unit in Acton under the name Phoenix of Vinyl. Police said the operation produced and distributed thousands of unauthorized records and ultimately infringed copyrights covering 108 artists.

Judge Darren Reed sentenced Ahmed to two years and eight months on the copyright offenses and three and a half years on the criminal property charge. The sentences will run at the same time rather than consecutively, leaving Ahmed with a total prison term of three and a half years.

Investigators traced £2.743 million in counterfeit vinyl sales to the operation over seven years. The case was referred to the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, a specialist City of London Police team known as PIPCU, after the British Phonographic Industry flagged suspected counterfeit records.

Police raided the Acton facility in February 2024 and seized 2,791 vinyl records along with equipment used to manufacture them. Officers also found four record presses estimated to be about 70 years old, roughly 3,000 metal stampers and thousands of sleeves and center labels.

The evidence weighed about 18 tonnes in total. Record labels later examined the seized titles and confirmed that each infringed copyright, according to police.

Investigators described the facility as a fully functioning underground manufacturing plant capable of producing counterfeit records on an industrial scale. The records were distributed through online marketplaces including eBay and Discogs, placing the unauthorized pressings alongside legitimate releases available to collectors.

The operation took advantage of a vinyl market that has continued to expand in the U.K. Vinyl sales rose 13.3% in 2025 to 7.6 million units, marking the format’s 18th consecutive year of growth, according to the British Phonographic Industry.

Taylor Swift was a major driver of that market, with her 2025 album The Life of a Showgirl becoming the country’s biggest-selling vinyl release of the year. Higher demand for physical releases has also created a larger market for counterfeiters attempting to reproduce sought-after albums and limited editions.

Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt of PIPCU said Ahmed had exploited artists and the wider music industry while taking advantage of vinyl’s resurgence. Police said the sentence was intended to send a warning to others selling counterfeit records.

Peter Ratcliffe, the BPI’s director of content protection, called the conviction significant and said the shutdown ended a major criminal operation. The industry group has warned that counterfeit physical music diverts money from artists, labels and legitimate retailers as vinyl sales continue to grow.

Ahmed’s sentence closes a seven-year operation that police said combined large-scale manufacturing with an organized distribution network. The presses, stampers and thousands of records recovered from the Acton site have now been removed from circulation.