Gardaí in Louth yesterday raided a rented house and broke up a production centre for counterfeiting DVDs. Gardaí believe the operation was supplying the black market throughout the north-east of the country and also part of Northern Ireland.
Among the thousands of films recovered were popular US movies that are not due for release in Irish cinemas until later this year.
There were boxes of the latest Colin Farrell movie SWAT, which is the second most popular movie in the US this week and so far grossed over $70 million ; it is not due for release in Ireland or Britain until December but dozens of copies were recovered by gardaí during yesterday afternoon's raid.
The DVDs and CDs were worth at least €500,00 and the computer equipment recovered was worth thousands.
The copying was taking place in a rented house in Dromiskin village. There gardaí found two shelves, each containing six DVD writers which were up and running and between them gave the gang behind this scam the ability to copy 12 movies in 10 minutes.
"This was definitely the nervecentre of this gang's operation," said a Garda spokesman.
"This was a production line; they were churning out 12 movies in 10 minutes and were in the process of copying movies when we arrived. There were empty cases for the copies as well as two digital printers which were being used to make copies of the sleeves for the cases," said a garda involved in the operation.
Other titles they were copying were Veronica Guerin and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as the latest Will Smith hit which has just gone on release in America, Bad Boys 2.