(AP) — A man accused of running an international counterfeit DVD ring was ordered Oct. 4 to remain in jail pending a $1 million bond.
During an afternoon court hearing in Los Angeles, Randolph Hobson Guthrie III’s parents stepped forward, putting up their $10 million New York City home to cover the bond, and Guthrie was expected to be released within a few days, said Virginia Kice, spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Under terms laid out by the court, if released on bail, Guthrie must remain under electronic monitoring with an ankle bracelet and confined to his parents’ home.
The next hearing in the case was scheduled for Oct. 24 in Mississippi, Kice said.
Guthrie was convicted in China of selling pirated DVDs and expelled the week of Sept. 26 to the United States, where he now faces multiple charges of copyright infringement.
The probe that led to the charges dates to September 2003 when an undercover ICE agent bought counterfeit DVDs at a Mississippi flea market.
Guthrie, of New York City, and another man, Abram Cody Thrush, were sentenced to up to 2-1/2 years in prison in April along with two Chinese co-defendants.
Both men were accused of using the Internet to sell more than 180,000 counterfeit DVDs to buyers in 25 countries, including about 20,000 discs to U.S. buyers.
Prosecutors said they seized 119,000 pirated DVDs in raids last summer on a warehouse and Guthrie’s Shanghai apartment.
ICE officials could not confirm published reports identifying Guthrie as a scion of industrialist Andrew Carnegie’s business partner.
On a Web site for meeting Russian brides, Guthrie posted a biography that identified him as the son of a New York plastic surgeon. He also said his family owned a bank, Bessemer Trust.
