POLICE have smashed one of the largest counterfeit music and video rings ever found in the UK, after raids on a market town.

Bootleg CDs and DVDs with a high street value of more than £250,000 were recovered in three raids in Stanley, last Thursday.

Detectives, working with trading standards officers and anti-piracy specialists, also recovered £10,000 in cash and thousands of blank CDs.

David Martin, director of the British Phonographic Industry's anti-piracy unit, said: "This is certainly one of the largest operations we have encountered in the UK to date, in terms of its potential manufacturing capability.

"The output of this factory would literally be tens of thousands of disks a week, so in that respect it has been a very successful operation."

Counterfeit products recovered included CDs and DVDs still not available on general release in the UK, such as Kill Bill Volume 2, and British film The Football Factory, which has not yet been screened in cinemas.

Mr Martin said: "These people know, anything they can get pre-release will go like hot cakes."

Durham police swooped on three private addresses in the South Stanley area in co-ordinated raids, at 10am last Thursday.

A force spokesman said officers found towers of computer equipment used for copying films and music on to DVD or CD - a process known as 'burning.'

All equipment was seized and is being examined by forensic experts.

Det Insp Dave Wolfe, head of the county's northern pro-active CID unit, said the raids were the result of a long-running intelligence gathering operation, led by Mr Martin's team.

The operation involved surveillance at car boot sales held in Seaham in east Durham, Tanfield Lea, near Stanley, and Batley's, near Chester-le-Street.

In the past two years, the region has become the Britain's biggest player in the music and film piracy.

Mr Martin said: "The North-East is a hotbed of counterfeiting. We have done more work in the North-East in the last couple of years than in any other area of the UK.

"Increasingly, criminal gangs are moving out of drugs and going into counterfeiting, because it is considered to be a very high profit, low-risk pastime."

Three men were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to defraud the music industry. They were later released on police bail pending further inquiries.