Bounty up on sniffer dogs

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian piracy syndicates have raised the bounty on the heads of two dogs after they helped find millions of dollars’ worth of fake DVDs and CDs, reports said Saturday.

Anti-piracy canines Lucky and Flo struck again on Friday, sniffing out caches of up to 100 000 illegal DVDs in their latest raid, the New Straits Times daily said. The black Labradors helped enforcement officers seize pirated copies of movies worth more than US$290 790 dollars hidden in 11 shops at a shopping mall in southern Johor state, the newspaper said.On March 20 the two dogs led officers to a hidden room stocked with fake DVDs and CDs worth more than 10 million ringgit in the same mall.But their success has put them in danger.Malaysian authorities said piracy syndicates were now more determined to kill them and had raised the bounty on their heads from 10 000 ringgit to 50 000 ringgit.Fahmi Kassim, Johor’s domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry’s enforcement director, said his officers had been attacked by syndicates who were furious that their businesses were threatened, the Star daily reported.”My men had just finished work for the day when the attack occurred,” Fahmi was quoted as saying by the Star.”If they retaliate because we raid their premises, we will just reinforce our team even more,” he said.Fahmi said some of his men were physically assaulted and hit by pepper spray while in another incident, a Molotov cocktail was flung into the garden of an enforcement officer’s home.Nampa-AFPThe black Labradors helped enforcement officers seize pirated copies of movies worth more than US$290 790 dollars hidden in 11 shops at a shopping mall in southern Johor state, the newspaper said.On March 20 the two dogs led officers to a hidden room stocked with fake DVDs and CDs worth more than 10 million ringgit in the same mall.But their success has put them in danger.Malaysian authorities said piracy syndicates were now more determined to kill them and had raised the bounty on their heads from 10 000 ringgit to 50 000 ringgit.Fahmi Kassim, Johor’s domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry’s enforcement director, said his officers had been attacked by syndicates who were furious that their businesses were threatened, the Star daily reported.”My men had just finished work for the day when the attack occurred,” Fahmi was quoted as saying by the Star.”If they retaliate because we raid their premises, we will just reinforce our team even more,” he said.Fahmi said some of his men were physically assaulted and hit by pepper spray while in another incident, a Molotov cocktail was flung into the garden of an enforcement officer’s home.Nampa-AFP