BUSTED: UK company is raided for fake vinyl production

Those record counterfeiting cases weren't that common even in the heyday of vinyl. The Sam Goody case is pretty famous. There was also a practice of 'backdooring'- legit plant making legit copies for whatever label presses more than required and 'back doors' them through illicit sales channels.
Hard goods piracy in the record business was on the decline given the market for digital, though I'm sure there were counterfeit CDs, DVDs, etc. The focus of the industry was very much on Internet file sharing, and mainly in the civil, not criminal realm. Post-9/11- also not real easy to get the Feds interested in much unless it was really egregious. 
And, of course, that business was the domain of the wise guys in the US. 

The REAL NEWS - huge wide vinyl growth rate! -  is as usual buried way down at the end-

Though still niche in terms of its size within the overall recorded music market, vinyl enjoyed another stellar year in 2016, with over 3.2 million LPs sold – a 53 per cent rise on 2015 and the highest annual total in a quarter of a century. The depth of this revival is illustrated by the fact that over 30 titles sold more than 10,000 copies in 2016, compared to just 10 in 2015. LPs now account for nearly 5 per cent of the album market.

5%? Well, la dee freaking da!

The key wording on this article was here... " ... specialising in Northern Soul records ... "Any Record Collector will tell you that this genre is THE hottest and most expensive of any genre (save, of course, pre-war Delta Blues 78's ... but that's another story).The most expensive 7" EVER sold was "Do I Love, Yes I Do" by Frank Wilson.( https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/the-worlds-rarest-record ).This article is out of date, I know that this record has since been sold again at a much higher price.

These scam artists were making reproductions of super-rare records and it's extremely lucrative indeed. We're not talking about pirating Supertramp LPs or anything as pedestrian as that. No, these guys knew precisely what they were doing as there is REAL money to be made here.

The British have a seemingly never-ending appetite for "Northern Soul" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_soul ) and are willing to pay incredible amounts of money for choice & rare items (always 7" from USA). This genre makes Doo-Wop and rare Jazz seem like veritable bargain-bin sales.
Aside: Pre-war Delta Blues 78s represent THE most expensive genre for any Record Collector to enter ... one of the top collectors here is John Tefteller who has kindly uploaded numerous images of THE rarest records on the planet, check them out here: http://www.tefteller.com/Some of these discs are unique (literally 1 copy) and contain in their worn grooves some of THE most outstanding ever made, some of which remains lost (like the two Paramount 78s by Willie Brown, who accompanied Charley Patton in one of his sessions).

mofimadnessThank You for sharing. Those guys really took risk selling on Amazon/eBay.No doubt that pirating has been around for a long time for the Russian and Southeast Asia markets.