A BRADFORD shopkeeper who admitted renting out counterfeit DVDs has been spared jail.

Shahid Ali, 33, was the leaseholder of Movie Palace on Manchester Road when the fake DVD copies were seized by police on January 7 last year.

He had already pleaded guilty to 20 charges of possessing goods with a false trademark for sale or hire at a previous hearing at Bradford and Keighley Magistrates' Court in March.

He had been due to be sentenced last month, but the decision was adjourned so figures could be obtained to show how much he had profited from his offending.

At that hearing, prosecutor Mark Brookes said officers used a search warrant to seize 4,000 DVDs from the shop and a garage.

Yesterday, Mr Brookes told the court that a number of bags of DVDs had been taken from behind the counter of the shop, with a sample of 67 then analysed by experts from the Federation Against Copyright Theft.

All 67 were found to be copies displaying false trademarks, including titles such as Dumb and Dumber 2, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

MORE TOP STORIES

Mr Brookes said that police felt the sample of DVDs taken from the shop was representative of the other DVDs found in the store, but Ben Thomas, mitigating for Ali, said his client maintained a "large number" of the products were genuine and didn't accept that the shop was selling solely counterfeit copies.

The court heard that Ali was charging £3 for the fake DVDs, with a loss to the retail industry of £8.11 per item.

Mr Thomas said that since the shop had been raided by police, Ali, of Dudley Street, Wakefield Road, Bradford, had given up the lease and was now working part-time in a takeaway.

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said that as it was only the 67 DVDs in the sample that had been confirmed as fake, that was the basis Ali must be sentenced on.

"This is a serious and prevalent offence, and a deterrent must be shown," he said.

"It attacks an industry that is very important and very vulnerable.

"You've made a terrible mistake, but you have admitted that throughout."

Ali was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for a year, and ordered to perform 100 hours of unpaid work.

A Proceeds of Crime hearing to reclaim any profits made will take place at a later date.