Those who have found themselves walking the street of a busy city have probably seen plenty of individuals running their own bootleg movie businesses on the sidewalk - but what you probably don't know is that there was one recently operating out of our nation's Department of Labor in Washington D.C.
CNN has published an article about former Labor Department employee Ricardo Taylor, who has admitted to running a bootleg movie operation out of the government department. Following his capitulation, it was ruled that he will serve 24 months of probation for the federal charge of copyright law violation. He will not serve any time in prison.
So how exactly did this work? Court documents say that the 57-year-old government employee - who served as the supervisor of the department mail room - had access to a five-bay DVD burner that he would use to copy discs. It's not mentioned in the report, but this presumably means that he was only selling films already available on home video - not new releases. He would then sell the movies to his colleagues at a price of $4 or $5 each.
Perhaps the most surprising detail about this story is the fact that Taylor was seemingly not in any way shy about his operation. Not only was he selling illegal DVDs during work hours, but he used his Department of Labor email and contacts to make sales. It is estimated that he started this "business" in 2008, and apparently it was massively successful. In 2013 alone he made over $19,000 thanks to the sale of 1,268 discs.
Now knowing the details of this operation, there is one big question that springs to mind: how the hell was Ricardo Taylor able to run this business for more than five years within a government institution? Surely he was very hush-hush about his side project when he first started out, but you don't start making thousands of annual sales without a lot of people being very aware of exactly what you're doing. Court documents say that Taylor kept a "ledger of his sales" and that the book also includes customer names. While that information has not been made public yet, it will be interesting to see if there are any notable names that wind up being discovered.
Within their report on the matter, CNN mentions an interesting factoid about Ricardo Taylor. In addition to his job at the Labor Department, the caught bootlegger was apparently also a manager at a local movie theater. At this time it's unclear if that's a position that he still holds.
It's not clear at this time when Ricardo Taylor was initially charged for his crimes, and while CNN reached for comment from his attorney, no statement was given before publication. Stay tuned for more updates on this story.
