Police Catch Primary
Distributor of Burned Discs
By Robert Goodier
Tico Times Staff
rgoodier@ticotimes.net

Police seized more than 1,500 pirated discs of music and movies Sunday, bringing down the “primary distributor” of burned discs in Heredia, northwest of San José. The operation was the culmination of five months of investigation in which Specialized Investigation Directorship (DIE) agents trained to confront intellectual property crimes, monitored the alleged distributor's movements, and passed up opportunities to arrest his vendors to assure they snatched the supplier.

The agents saw the alleged distributor, a Panamanian man by the last name of Ramos, drive a truck loaded with the illegal merchandise into downtown Heredia, where he avoided police, waiting for them to leave before contacting his vendors. Police confiscated 1,246 movies on DVD, some of it pornography, 225 karaoke music video discs and 26 music CDs.

The bust follows another arrest Friday, this one in Turrialba, the Caribbean slope city in the province of Limón, in which DIE agents seized 531 pirated discs and arrested four vendors.

Hugo Rodríguez, Central American Operations Director of the Phonographic Industry Protector Association (APDIF), agents of which assisted in Ramos' arrest, said the industry can thank Costa Rican and other Central American police for the seizure of 600,000 pirated discs in the isthmus this year, as well as disc burners and computers for downloading the material.

Randal Ruiz, interim head of DIE's intellectual property rights branch, told The Tico Times his staff of eight officers has carried out about 300 operations throughout the country this year, focusing the brunt of their actions on fake lawyers and doctors who practice with falsified credentials, and on fake ID- and document-makers of all kinds. He estimates they have made a dozen arrests each of fake doctors and lawyers – the doctors are usually South Americans who open small clinics in downtown San José, and the lawyers are usually Costa Ricans with a legal background of some kind but without the proper degrees or certifications to practice law.

They have confiscated as many as 15,000 pirated discs, reproductions of “very good quality,” Ruiz said.

“Even the covers are very good – you see that it is a very well-done job,” he said. In some cases, the only way to distinguish the fakes from the real deals are the prices, which, for original movies range ¢5-7,000 ($10.20-14.30), and for the pirated versions range ¢1-1,500 ($2-3).

The distributors manage complex, 24-hour operations and networks of mostly Nicaraguan vendors who sell the copies in the streets.

“Different groups organize it – foreigners, mostly Panamanians and Colombians, with sophisticated computer equipment with which they can constantly download music and movies. They can have up to 10 machines burning constantly day and night. We have a report that they have people working day and night shifts downloading enormous quantities – 20-30,000 every week,” Ruiz said.

His officers work on a slim budget fighting a “multimillion-dollar” crime.

“The work is done well only because of the officers' training and the love they have for their job,” he said. He said he would like to see more political will behind the effort and more interest from the Chief Prosecutor's Office in punishing the people the DIE investigates.

The law imposes one to three years of jail on people convicted of illegally reproducing movies and music.

Pirated movies and music have been used to flesh out terrorists' bank accounts, according to DIE head Paul Chaves, who said in a statement that terrorists sell pirated discs to finance criminals and terrorist strikes in some regions worldwide, especially the Middle East.