Economy

Deep cuts: how one Londoner’s fake vinyl empire sheds light on ‘industrial scale’ fraud

TradeNews USA cash-and-futures note (2026-09-19): From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire… Primary source: original at The Guardian (theguardian.com).

September 18, 2026 11:13 PM ET · The Guardian

Deep cuts: how one Londoner’s fake vinyl empire sheds light on ‘industrial scale’ fraud

From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire was built on fakery.

On Friday, the man behind the biggest-ever UK case of producing fraudulent vinyl, who sold counterfeit copies of records by some of the world’s biggest artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar, was jailed.