Gardaí moved against one of the biggest counterfeit operators in the north-east yesterday when they seized pirated DVDs worth €500,000 in Dundalk.
The haul included Terminator 3 and other leading US box office titles.
Gardaí say they were being sold at open-air markets between Dublin and the North and the seizure "has dealt a significant blow to that business". Despite the value of the seizure it is probable that the man who ran the operation has already made millions from it and is one of the leading pirates in the country.
Industry sources now believe that many of the Dublin based pirates are buying their "master" copies, which themselves are pirated, from stalls run by this man, at a number of open-air markets in the Border region.
"We found a number of empty boxes in the house, which suggests he had already sold a lot of this product on the black market," said one source.
The seizure was made in a planned search of a house in an estate in Dundalk yesterday morning. As well as a few thousand DVDs there were 1,700 blank DVD cases, reproduced covers for the DVDs and a number of music CDs.
The Colin Farrell movie The Recruit and Legally Blonde 2 were also seized in Dundalk yesterday. Although no one was arrested, gardaí said: "This seizure is just part of an ongoing operation and there will be follow-up searches."