By Lydia Polgreen, New York Times


A Secret Service raid of a Queens warehouse on Monday broke up what recording industry experts are calling the largest music CD counterfeiting operation ever, capable of churning out six million discs a year.

The raid of a 2,000-square-foot factory in Long Island City was the result of a two-month investigation by the Secret Service, which enforces copyright law, and former law enforcement officials working for the Recording Industry Association of America, said Frank Creighton, head of the antipiracy division of the organization, a trade group.

The seizure of 35,000 illegally copied music discs, 10,000 movies on DVD, 421 interconnected disc burners and expensive printing equipment made it the largest raid in the more than 30 years the trade group has been tracking such seizures, Mr. Creighton said.

The company supplied illegal copies of CD's and DVD's to distributors along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest, Mr. Creighton said, but was also a major supplier for illegal Canal Street peddlers.

"It is the largest manufacturing operation involving CD-R manufacturing technology to date that we have come across," Mr. Creighton said.

Three men were arrested, including Zhong Rong Chen, who investigators identified as the head of the counterfeiting operation. Two of his employees, Angel Ivan Espinoza and Mario Perez Flores, were also charged, investigators said.

The building where Mr. Zhong's factory was located, on 37th Street in Long Island City, has mostly garment manufacturers and artists' lofts. People who work in the building were rattled when a crowd of officers battered down the door to the second-floor loft Monday.

Mr. Zhong was quiet and secretive, a factory manager said. "Sometimes he would come to work when we were leaving," the man said. "We thought maybe he was trading overseas or something."

In recent years the trade in counterfeit CD's and DVD's has become more competitive and as a result more violent, leading to two shootouts in Midtown Manhattan, one of which left a Guinean immigrant dead last month.

Mr. Creighton said that his organization focuses on breaking up counterfeit operations, especially around the holidays, when people flood the streets of New York City looking for bargains. But as the recording industry has struggled with slumping sales in the last two years, and because technology makes mass production of flawless copies easy, piracy has become a larger problem.