US citizen faces trial for DVD piracy after deportation from China

An American who served behind bars in China for distributing pirated DVDs on the Internet was taken into custody upon his arrival in the United States on charges of selling counterfeit goods, US officials said Monday.

Randolph Hobson Guthrie, who arrived at Los Angeles International Airport Friday by a flight from Shanghai, was due in a downtown courtroom Tuesday for a bond hearing while awaiting trial on federal charges in Mississippi.

Guthrie and another US citizen, Abram Thrush, were convicted last April in China. It was described as a result of the first piracy investigation conducted jointly by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Chinese law enforcement authorities.

The case began when ICE agents bought counterfeit DVDs in September 2003 at a Mississippi flea market.

The cooperative investigation led a court in Shanghai to convict Guthrie of selling and distributing more than 840,000 dollars worth of pirated movies on DVDs via the Internet, involving buyers from more than 20 nations, including the United States.

Chinese prosecutors contended that since October 2002, Guthrie had illegally sold a total of about 180,000 pirated DVDs around the globe through eBay and a Russian-based website, www.threedollardvd. com, ICE officials said.

Guthrie was sentenced by the Chinese court to two and a half years in prison and fined 500,000 yuan (more than 62,000 US dollars) and was ordered to be deported after his release.

The charges filed against Guthrie in Mississippi include conspiracy, importing pirated DVDs, copyright infringement, money laundering and trafficking goods using counterfeit marks, officials said.

Source: Xinhua