Rehan Ahmed, 40, has been jailed for three and a half years after selling £2.743 million worth of counterfeit vinyl records in the UK between 2017 and 2024. Operating as Phoenix of Vinyl from a west London unit, he manufactured unauthorised records featuring artists including Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, exploiting vinyl’s growing popularity and depriving musicians, labels and legitimate retailers of income.

Police seized 2,791 finished records, four vintage presses, 3,000 metal stampers, thousands of sleeves and labels, and 18 tonnes of evidence during raids in February 2024. Labels confirmed that all the seized titles infringed copyright, involving 108 artists; the case was described as the UK’s largest counterfeit-vinyl seizure, although reports cited around 15,000 records at the premises overall. The conviction follows another operation in which 6,498 counterfeit records were seized in Luton, while legitimate UK vinyl sales reached 7.6 million units in 2025.