Two-year suspended sentence for man caught selling pirated DVDs

A man caught selling pirated DVDs at a flea market last January will be spending the next two years with the possibility of a jail term hanging over him, after a court handed him a suspended sentence yesterday.

51-year-old Jesmond Musu pleaded guilty to charges of falsifying trademarks and breach of copyright, which had been brought against him by police acting on the complaint of an unidentified third party.

Prosecuting Inspector Rennie Stivala told the court how Musu was arrested after police had raided his stall at Ta' Qali flea market and seized a number of pirated DVDs. The inspector exhibited a list of the DVDs retrieved from his stall.

In her judgment, Magistrate Miriam Hayman took into consideration Musu’s early guilty plea and his complete cooperation with the police investigation and imposed a sentence of one-year’s imprisonment suspended for two, after this punishment had been jointly suggested by the prosecution and the defence. 

The magistrate also ordered that the pirated DVDs be destroyed.