SHANGHAI, July 30 (UPI) -- Chinese police have arrested two Americans as suspected ringleaders of a DVD piracy operation, the Ministry of Public Security said Friday in Shanghai.
Randolph Hobson Guthrie and Cody Abram Thrush were arrested on July 1 in Shanghai, along with four other suspects, Xinhua reported Friday. More than 210,000 illegally copied DVDs, seven computers, three telephones and a large number of mailbags were confiscated, the report said. Bank accounts with funds worth over $93,000 were frozen.
Security officials said the arrests were the result of close cooperation between Chinese and American law enforcement agencies after U.S. officials alerted them to the case. They said the two Americans had sold 100,000 pirated DVDs through the Internet, 20,000 in the United States.
This is the first successful cooperation between Chinese public security officials and U.S. immigration and customs officials, the report said.
