A ROGUE trader who made thousands of pounds by selling pirated versions of blockbuster films at car boot sales has escaped a jail sentence.

Alan Rootham, 38, used computer equipment at his home to copy films such as The Italian Job, Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean before selling them on for as little as £2 each.

Teesside Crown Court heard that one film in the Matrix trilogy was being sold by Rootham even though it had only just gone on general release at the cinema.

Rootham, of Hollystone Drive, Ingleby Barwick, near Stockton, who regularly traded from a van at car boot sales in Thornaby and on Redcar racecourse, was yesterday given a two-year community rehabilitation order by Judge George Moorhouse and ordered to pay £1,000 within the next six months.

He was said to have criminally benefited by £7,888 from his counterfeit dealings over a period between May 2003 and February of last year.

Material seized from him was ordered to be destroyed.

Trading standards officers from Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council and Stockton Borough Council had posed as customers to buy DVDs and CDs from Rootham.

They also executed a search warrant to raid his home in August 2003, recovering more than 200 counterfeit discs, said Jonny Walker, prosecuting.

John Gillette, for Rootham, who had already pleaded guilty to 29 offences of possessing articles which infringed copyright and selling goods with false trade markings, said he was now on benefit having ceased trading.

He said he had been waiting eight months to be sentenced as a result of delays caused by a proceeds of crime investigation.

After the case, Howard Turton, principal trading standards officer with Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, said a number of arrests and convictions had taken place of car boot traders as a result of an operation to target people selling counterfeit goods.

He said: "Alan Rootham was one of the most prominent among them and had a regular clientele.

"He made an awful lot of money throughout the summer of 2003 and, prior to that. He knew what he was doing but blatantly ignored the law and repeated warnings from us."

* Last month, George Banks, 54, of Ouston, Chester-le-Street, a car boot sale promoter at Redcar Racecourse, was convicted of allowing counterfeit goods to be sold at the event and fined £6,000.