Business information

Market operator responsible for sale of counterfeit goods

Hertfordshire Trading Standards has secured a landmark money laundering conviction against a market operator and two of its directors.

Wendy Fair Markets Ltd, and directors Nicholas Hobday and Sally Ward, were found guilty yesterday of benefiting financially from the sale of counterfeit DVDs, CDs, and computer software at Bovingdon Market.

It is the first time a market operator has been convicted of accepting - in the form of pitch rents - money it knew, or suspected, had been earned through criminal means, and followed a seven-week trial at St Albans Crown Court.

Trading standards officers, working with Herts police, the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), and FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft), carried out an extensive investigation to bring the prosecution.

The jury also found stallholders Christopher Constantine, 49, and his partner Louise Taylor, 31, of Bardolph Road, Islington, London, guilty of selling counterfeit DVDs.

Five traders on three other stalls had earlier pleaded guilty to the same offence.

They were:

Ricci Jones, 38, of Dylan Court, Houghton Regis, Beds and Gareth Richards, 26, of Lower End Road, Milton Keynes, Bucks;

Karen Birmingham, 48, and husband Alan, also 48, of Castle Road, Bedford;

John Granger, 57, of Holt Road, Romford, Essex.

The convictions against Wendy Fair, Hobday and Ward relate to the activities on the stalls run by the Birminghams, and Constantine and Taylor.

Sentencing will be held at St Albans Crown Court on September