Man Jailed for Selling $3.6M in Counterfeit Taylor Swift and Rihanna Vinyl
Rehan Ahmed received a jail sentence after his warehouse was found to contain the UK's largest-ever stash of fake vinyl records, valued at $3.6 million, including counterfeit albums by Taylor Swift and Rihanna.
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Man Jailed for Selling $3.6 Million in Counterfeit Taylor Swift, Rihanna Vinyl
The largest stash of fake records in UK history was sitting in Rehan Ahmed's warehouse By Alex Suskind September 21, 2026 Save this story Save this story
A man charged with producing the largest stash of counterfeit vinyl in UK history was sentenced on Monday to three years and six months in prison. Rehan Ahmed, 40, had been running the vinyl-pressing-and-selling scam for seven years before police raided his Phoenix of Vinyl warehouse in 2024, where authorities discovered a staggering 15,000 bootleg LPs spanning 108 different artists—including albums by Taylor Swift, Drake, Rihanna, Bad Bunny, the Beatles, Ed Sheeran, and more. Ahmed later pleaded guilty to two charges of breach of artists’ copyright, and acquiring and using criminal property.
According to The Guardian , when police raided the facility, they “found a squalid mess, with chemicals stored in fridges next to cans of lager” and LPs, receipts, and other documents “randomly scattered around.” Ahmed, who generated a total of £2,743,000 (or $3,667,921.39) in sales, had initially been issued a legal cease and desist order in 2017 but continued printing vinyl regardless.
In a statement, Peter Ratcliffe, the director of content protection at BPI (British Phonographic Institute), said, “With music on physical formats enjoying a resurgence, the market in counterfeit records has unfortunately also been growing as criminals cash in at the expense of creators and fans. This doesn’t just impact the legal music economy and everyone that works and invests in it — it also affects every one of us as citizens who fall victim to other forms of criminality that it funds.”
Alex Suskind has overseen music coverage for New York magazine’s Vulture and, before that, Entertainment Weekly . He has written about TV, film, technology, politics, and tons of other stuff for The Guardian , Vanity Fair, and The Fader. ... Read More News Director
_Originally reported by [Pitchfork](https://pitchfork.com/story/man-jailed-for-selling-counterfeit-records-taylor-swift-rihanna-records/)._
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