Low risk, high profits draw gangs into piracy.

When police raided the El Monte home of a suspected movie bootlegger last May, officers found tens of thousands of pirated DVDs stashed in a roach-infested garage.

Stacked along the inside wall of the garage was disassembled equipment typically used to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant similar to speed.

"These guys are figuring out it's a lot easier and safer to pirate DVDs than make meth," said Deputy District Attorney Bill Clark, a prosecutor in the major fraud division. "In some cases, they make more money selling DVDs than drugs."

Movie pirates spend about $1.10 to create a counterfeit DVD, labels and a case, which is then sold on the street for $5, according to Investigative Consultants, a Torrance-based firm that is one of about 100 agencies nationwide contracted by the Motion Picture Association of America to track down movie pirates.

The profitability of movie piracy has begun to attract gangs and international cartels to Santee Alley, a pedestrian bazaar in downtown's Fashion District and the epicenter for counterfeit movies on the West Coast.

Groups involved in the drug trade are quickly branching into trafficking pirated DVDs, sometimes using it as a cover for selling crack and other illegal substances. And within the last two years the Mexican mafia has begun to move into selling pirated videos locally, sparking a Santee Alley turf war that has occasionally led to fisticuffs, Clark said.

"We are worried about that because the local gangs are getting involved," he said. "It tends to be young gang members on the streets selling this stuff, which is a change. It used to be older immigrants."

With the change, organization of the illegal DVD trade has become more sophisticated, modeling itself on the proven structure of narcotics traffickers. Street vendors sell the product and take orders, mid-level distributors move the films and the bosses handle importing and manufacturing operations.

Counterfeiters have also mimicked drug dealers' tactics to avoid police. Scouts on bicycles and other lookouts are armed with sketches and license plate numbers of plainclothes detectives and investigators, according to Kris Buckner, owner of Investigative Consultants.

"You've got to look at it just like dope," he said. "It's structured the same way."

Investigators have also uncovered connections between some Los Angeles pirates and Vancouver-based pirates with ties to rings in Asia, according to Ken Jacobsen, director of worldwide piracy operations at the MPAA. Unlike the primitive pirated videos produced locally, shot mostly with camcorders and copied on over-the-counter home computer equipment, rings operating out of China and Russia generate higher quality copies by using factories outfitted with professional equipment.

Under Chief William Bratton, the LAPD's Central Division, which includes Santee Alley, has made movie piracy a higher priority, Jacobsen said. "Bratton had a zero-tolerance policy for this in New York, as he does here," Jacobsen said. "He took a hard line with these guys in New York and he's doing the same thing in L.A."

Last year the LAPD confiscated more than $20 million of counterfeit DVDs, according to the MPAA.

The state passed laws in 1999 making it illegal in California to sell pirated items, possess pirated materials worth more than $400 and manufacture counterfeit goods. Since the laws were enacted, Clark said, the District Attorney's office has filed counterfeiting and piracy charges against 518 people.

"We're trying to get out ill front of it. We think it's going to be the next crime wave and we're trying to figure out what we can do about it," he said. "As technology improves, this is going to be the currency of illegal trade out there. It's sort of like the war against drugs--it would have been nice to get into that game much earlier."

That immediacy is starting to sink in at the courts, Clark said. Judges, who would typically give convicted movie counterfeiters a slap on the wrist in recent years, have begun to issue harsher sentences.

"Lately judges are starting to come around," Clark said. "We are starting to get prison sentences out of most major fraud convictions."