A dodgy dealer from the West Country has been slapped with an additional £230,000 repayment order after selling counterfeit vinyl records globally. Richard Hutter, who traded under the moniker Vinyl Groove, was initially sentenced at Bournemouth Crown Court in April 2023.
The court heard how he pocketed over £1.2m by peddling the fake vinyl records worldwide. He was told to pay £373,589.64 within three months or face a three-month stint behind bars.
However, after the payments were made in July 2023, Dorset Trading Standards spotted a discrepancy that suggested Hutter might have more hidden assets. A new investigation was launched which revealed he had assets worth £229,962.50 that weren’t declared at the previous hearing.
Hutter was then ordered to pay this extra amount within three months or risk a three-year sentence at Bournemouth Crown Court on October 16, 2024. The recovered funds are set to be reinvested by Dorset Council into further disruption and asset recovery work, as well as funding local crime-fighting priorities for the benefit of the community.
Councillor Gill Taylor, Dorset Council’s Cabinet Member for Health and Housing, including regulatory services such as Trading Standards, remarked: “When our Trading Standards team investigates cases where the perpetrator has made significant sums of money from their crimes, we will always seek to recover this through confiscation. If future assets are identified, we can apply to the courts to seize these until all the benefit from the crime has been recovered.”
“Unfortunately, counterfeiting is often seen by criminals as a low-risk, high-reward crime. It is often linked to money laundering and can be used to help fund other serious crimes. It damages the UK economy, undermines the interests of legitimate businesses, and pushes up the cost to consumers of buying good quality genuine items.
“It is not a victimless crime. We are extremely pleased with this result, and I’d like to thank everyone involved for their hard work.”