Music bootlegger jailed

Britain's king of bootleggers was today jailed for three-and-a-half years, more than a decade after he founded an illicit recording empire that earned him an estimated £15million.

Mark Purseglove was the recording industry's "number one enemy", selling millions of illegally recorded CDs by every major pop artist, at a 1,000 per cent profit.

Purseglove, 32, used a network of corrupt studio employees and live sound engineers to obtain professional-quality recordings from thousands of concerts.

So damaging was his operation to the record industry that victims including Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page offered to testify in court against him.

At the time of his arrest in June, 2002, the catalogue of CDs available from one of his companies ran to more than 2,400 entries, starting with Abba and ending with ZZ Top. They were sold at an average price of ?10 each at record fairs, through music magazines and over the internet.

The profits funded a lifestyle of fast cars, firstclass travel and expensive homes. Purseglove always wore designer suits and a ?5,000 Rolex and drove a £104,000 Aston Martin, while his girlfriend Deborah Sargeant, a former producer for Big Brother, had a £30,000 Audi TT sports car.

The pair lived at a £1.1million townhouse in South Kensington and a £360,000 weekend flat in Hove, East Sussex, but also owned a £600,000 rental property in Old Church Street, Chelsea. Police suspected he invested in properties overseas, but could not to trace any.

Purseglove started in 1990, using a professional recorder to make tapes of concerts which he would then sell at record fairs. But before long he was buying recordings from other smalltime dealers and bribing bands' sound engineers to let him make recordings from mixing desks.

In 1991 when the Rolling Stones won a restraining order to stop him selling illicit recordings. He continued regardless and in 1997 was trapped in a sting operation, together with 13 of the world's leading bootleggers. In 1999 he was jailed for four months for selling bootlegs at the Reading Festival.

DC Chris Horne, who led the criminal-investigation into the case, described Purseglove as "cavalier". "He made no comment in interviews. His attitude was 'I've been here before. This does not faze me."

Purseglove, defended by leading QC Nicholas Valios, claimed he has been bankrupted by the case and was awarded legal aid. Yet detectives are convinced he salted millions away.

One police source said: "We can prove he made £6.6 million between 1992 and 2002. But that figure without much difficulty could reach £15 million. It could be much more."

John Kyffin, the fraud squad officer behind the financial investigation, said: "He was a bright businessman. If he had kept it lowkey he would have got away with it."

At Blackfriars Crown Court Purseglove admitted one count of conspiracy to defraud between December, 1991, and June, 2002.