The vinyl frontier

As album sales boom in the UK, so has the illegal trade in poor-quality fakes. But dogged record detectives are fighting back against the bootleggers

- John Harris

IN JULY 2018, the peace of an upmarket cul-de-sac in rural Hampshire, England, was disturbed by the arrival of two police officers and three people from trading standards banging on the door of a big redbrick house. They had a warrant to carry out an "inspection", but it was really a raid.

The man they were investigating was 50-year-old Richard Hutter, and their job that day took three hours. As they searched his home, he spent most of the time insisting he had done nothing wrong. His mood was one of shock and deep discomfort. For at least six years, he had quietly sold his wares online and funded an apparently affluent lifestyle to the tune of around £1.2m ($1.5m); now, the consequences were coming home.

The raid turned up less evidence than the people involved would have liked, but enough to form the kernel of a case. They found one vinyl copy of Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age, and 13 of Enima, the 1996 album by the California alternative metal band Tool, as well as 18 outer and inner sleeves of the same record. Investigators also found "a big book, like an encyclopedia of vinyl with details of records' values", along with a handful of business cards from people involved in buying and selling vinyl records.

The biggest finds were on a mobile phone that was seized: WhatsApp messages mentioning album artwork, and downloads of original recordings. Hutter had also taken detailed pictures of what seemed to be his HQ: an anonymous-looking office, with a solitary desk and computer, and boxes and boxes of vinyl albums.