Part 4: A DVD pirate from Walthamstow

We continue with our series where I am sharing the stories that an ex-legal interpreter 'Peter' has told me. In Part 4, we will dive back into the murky world of Chinese illegal immigrants.

Limpeh: So far we have heard about an illegal immigrant who was arrested for sleeping in a brothel, a young man who made a brazen escape through a restaurant kitchen and a young woman from Sabah who was forced to commit crimes by the Chinese mafia. I am beginning to get the picture that the Chinese mafia are run by super intelligent criminals who know how to stay out of trouble whilst exploiting vulnerable people to do their dirty work, on the ground.

Peter: That is right. They are essentially very good businessmen - they identify a business opportunity, they create something to exploit that opportunity to make money, once it is no longer profitable, they move on to something new. Let me give you an example of a market they used to dominate and have given up.

This used to be a familiar sight on the streets of London ten years ago.

From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, before we had super high speed broadband that allowed us to download whole movies off the internet in minutes, there were these pirate DVD sellers on the streets of London, mostly illegal Chinese immigrants. They would sell you pirate copies of the latest Hollywood films, usually those still in the cinema, for just a few pounds. These guys would walk the streets with no more than a light bag and when they spot the police, they just run for it. They don't steal, they don't hurt people, they're not aggressive - they just harm the profits of the high street cinema chains and there's obviously a copyright violation. They know how to keep a low profile, fly under the radar.

Limpeh: Yes I remember those DVD pirates. It's been a while since I've seen one of those.

Peter: Yeah, that's because we're all illegally downloading films now or watching them online, everyone is doing it - like I watched the entire series of House of Cards on one of these websites without paying a penny. Technology has put these DVD pirates out of a job - so in 2007, I met this man, we'll call him Farmer, as he used to work on a farm in Fujian province, in Southern China before coming to England as an illegal immigrant some years ago.

Limpeh: So was Farmer a DVD priate?

Peter: Yes he was, he had been doing it for a few years and getting by; but as broadband speeds went up, he found his work harder and harder. So in a last ditch attempt to try to offer something new, the "boss" whom he had worked for decided that they could no longer get by selling Hollywood movies, they needed to sell hard core pornography.

Limpeh: That still doesn't solve Farmer's problem - we now have faster internet to download even more porn, why would we want to buy porn from a Chinese guy by the side of the road? It's something we do in private, on our laptops, in the privacy of our homes... for obvious reasons. Why else would you watch porn?

Peter:  Some people prefer not to view porn on the internet if they have to share a computer - they don't want others to see what sites they have visited in the browser history, so they may prefer to use a DVD instead to view porn. 

Limpeh: I'm not convinced that this is a big market - it's a niche market at best.

Peter: Yeah I see your point, who buys a DVD these days? But when they already have these DVD factories set up which were churning out hundreds of pirate DVDs a day - so they were trying to adapt it to changing market conditions instead of just abandoning what was a functioning business. Anyway, it was not Farmer's decision - the boss decided one day we're all going to be porn pirates, not just DVD pirates, that's the only way we are going to make money if we're going to stay in this DVD business. Farmer and the other DVD pirates were assured that porn was completely legal in the UK and they eve went to some of the adult shops in Soho where they browsed through loads of shops selling all manners of kinky porn: DVDs, magazines, sex toys, you name it.

Adult entertainment is big business in the UK.

Furthermore, they were undercutting the sex shops in Soho. These sex shops will sell you a porno DVD at about £10 to £15 - Farmer was offering them for as £3 to £5 for a pirate copy.

Limpeh: Well yes, but these places are licensed to sell these adult entertainment material, not all places are.

Peter: Well, it's not as if these DVD pirates were doing an honest business when they were selling pirate copies of Hollywood movies to begin with - so there isn't a line in the sand to cross, they started on the wrong side of this line to begin with. So that's why they are not concerned with technicalities like that. So as it happened, Farmer sold a copy of a porno DVD to a minor, a teenager who was under 18. This teenager went home and his parents found that DVD in his bad, so the teenager confessed that he bought it from a Chinese guy on the street in front of Walthamstow train station. His parents made a police report and the police arrested Farmer. After all, Farmer broke many laws - he was selling adult material without a license, he sold adult material to a minor, he had violated copyright violation, selling media material that he had no right to and on top of that, he was an illegal immigrant.

Limpeh: I thought you said these guys knew how to avoid detection.

Peter: Normally, they do - they would throw the bag away as the DVDs themselves were not that expensive, they would jettison the evidence and just run like mad. But this time, Farmer did just that and got knocked down by a car when he ran across Selborne Road without looking. Sent him flying through the air, knocked him out cold.

Limpeh: Goodness me.

Peter: Yeah he was badly hurt. He broke a leg and had a concussion. He was in hospital for a long time. That was where I first met him, as he was assigned a lawyer to defend him as he prepared to face all this long list of charges.

Limpeh: Did Farmer realize that what he did was illegal?

Peter: Oh yeah, he knew it was illegal but he had to make money anyway. These illegal immigrants are pretty desperate people, they are often in debt and would do anything to make money.

Limpeh: Now in the previous cases that you told me about, the police only managed to catch the pawn at the bottom of the food chain and it seems like Farmer is another one of these pawns used by the Chinese mafia. Did they manage to work their way up the food chain and catch Farmer's boss?

Peter: Farmer was scared and afraid to talk to us for a long time - when I first met him and spoke to him in Mandarin, he pretended not to understand and spoke to me in Fujian dialect. What he didn't realize is that my parents are from Taiwan so I understand Fujian dialect as well, so he couldn't keep that up when I told him I understood every word.

Limpeh: I speak Fujian dialect too! I speak Hokkien.

Peter: Anyway, the police tried to get an address out of him - it seems that he lived in house in Walthamstow with other Chinese illegal immigrants. The police wanted to raid that house. This is the bit where I am sure he lied. He pretended that his English was so bad that he didn't remember the name of the street. And they were like okay, draw me a map - but he said he couldn't remember either. He said that if you took me there, I could show you which house it was, but of course, he was laid up in a hospital with a badly smashed up leg. There was no way the doctors were going to let him move - even if it was to get into a police car to be driven around Walthamstow.

Farmer was selling DVDs to the public for years - surely he could tell them about the movies he had, which ones were the latest ones, he must have been able to haggle with the customers, talk about prices. He must have had some language ability - but he pretended to speak absolutely no English. It was frustrating to deal with him as he was afraid to give up the identity of the people he worked for. Finally, the police took out a map and told him to point out exactly where the house was. Reluctantly, he did so and pointed to a street - the police then asked him, "what is the house number?" I translated that - he just stared down at his hands. The police then told him that he was going to jail for a long time and if he co-operated, his sentence may be shorter. Farmer then uttered, "17".

So armed with an address, the police got ready to raid that house but by the time they got there, it was empty. The property was leased through a local estate agent who told the police that the property was originally leased to a Chinese student who paid the rent regularly, never caused any trouble, never complained about anything - so they had no reason to check on the property, they just collected the rent month after month via direct debit. When the police checked the ID of that Chinese student, he had graduated from his university and presumably left England a few years ago. Chances are, when Farmer failed to return home that night, they would have already made plans to move everyone out of that house as they would have known that he was probably arrested and it was a matter of time before they raided that house where they were all living.

Limpeh: What was Farmer like, in person?

Peter: He was dejected, depressed, even angry at times. Clearly, he was in jail, he was not happy. Usually I have some kind of relationship with the clients, they usually appreciate the job I do for them - but Farmer barely looked me in the eye, he viewed me with suspicion. Sometimes he would refuse to answer my questions and ignore me, or glare at me. Also, he knew that he was going to get deported to China at the end of his sentence, it was not a prospect he relished as he wanted to stay in the UK to make money. Don't forget, people like him paid a lot of money to come to England and to be deported under such circumstances, to return home with nothing... It was not what he had in mind. I don't know what happened to him in the end, I had left the job when he had not even finished his sentence.

Limpeh: Do all your cases involve such dramatic events? Farmer had a chase through Walthamstow which ended with him being knocked down by a car, Smoky jumped out of a kitchen window to make a brazen escape, Sabah was sucked into a high tech fraud... Do you have more mundane cases or are they all just as exciting?

Peter: Oh there are mundane cases but they don't make interesting stories. There's this Chinese-Malaysian guy who cheated the benefits system by claiming all kinds of benefits from housing benefit to job seeker's allowance to child support when he wasn't even British and wasn't entitled to all of these benefits - but he used a fake ID and helped himself to all of these benefits for over a year before someone realized that he wasn't entitled to it. There was a lot of paperwork involved in that and he just played all innocent, like "I don't speak English, a friend told me I could do it if I let him fill up these forms for me and he was just trying to help me, I didn't know it was wrong or illegal." Anyway, there was no question of his guilt - he did take the money, but he was trying to get off the hook by playing dumb. That wasn't such an interesting story-  it was all just about translating a whole lot of paperwork for the client.

There was also another couple from China who cheated on their accounts for their shop to make it look as if they made a loss, so they don't have to pay any taxes - boy that was a lot of paperwork to sort through. Again, nothing all that exciting. I have even come across Chinese foreign students who are supposedly studying at a local university but their English is so bad they need my services when they get into trouble with the law and need to go to court. I wonder how they learn anything at university when they barely speak any English.

Often in these disputes, I am told to explain volumes of legal documents, forms to these Chinese people so they understand the paperwork involved - and sometimes they can chuck a stack of paper at me an inch thick and I'll be reading for two or three hours, if you think I'm bored - a few of the clients have fallen asleep during that process. So I'll look at a court report and explain to the client, "这个是上个月的法庭报告..." Of course the report is in English, so I would have to read it in English, then translate it line by line into Mandarin. It's a tedious process.

Limpeh: Do you ever think to just go, "blah blah blah", not important, not important, I'll just skip the next part...

Peter: That sounds tempting, but no I didn't - firstly, I never know what is important and what is not, what if I missed out something super important to the case? Secondly, I was paid by the hour, so I have no incentive to shorten the process - rather I have an incentive to take longer if I want to be paid more for the job.

Limpeh: What would you say to people who are thinking, "hey I could do this, this could be a career for me."

Peter: By all means, it is a respectable job, you are providing a valuable service. If you are already effectively bilingual, then you don't have to think too hard, the work can be easy. Some people work long hours, they get emails from their bosses in the middle of the night, they work weekends as well...

Limpeh: You're talking about a lot of people I know.

Peter: Whereas when I was an interpreter, when I work I get paid. When I finish, the moment my time sheet is signed, that's it - that's the end of my services. I don't have anything else to do. I go to the cinema, I go swimming, I go shopping, I go to see my mates at the pub, I go to the gym and see my friends there, I go home and watch loads of crap on TV. There isn't that much responsibility. The lawyer is the one who does the hard work - but the lawyer gets paid a lot more than the interpreter. Sometimes you get your hands on an interesting case and it is like watching a real life drama - sometimes I start to care for the people I deal with and I remember in the case of Sabah, she was once crying so hard that the lawyer whispered to me, "Please say something to her in Chinese, comfort her in Mandarin." That was one of the few times I spoke directly to the client rather than just translating the words of the lawyer.

The downside was that the work could be irregular. Sometimes I was super busy, other times I had one or two jobs a week. I need at least a few jobs a week to sustain myself financially - when I got offered work, I did as many assignments as I could. When there wasn't work, I was careful with money. I didn't dare spend a lot of money on nice things like going on exotic holidays because I feared that I may run into a dry patch where I get very little work for a month or two and I would need my savings. Getting on the property ladder under such circumstances would have been impossible - I would've never got a mortgage. Also, sometimes they took ages to pay.

Peter wanted to have exotic holidays abroad...

Limpeh: Yes, you've complained about that before.

Peter: Also, there isn't the kind of support you would get from colleagues whom you know well - the lawyers barely know you and you just turn up, hope that they're easy to work with. Sometimes you can get lawyers, police officers or judges who get impatient with you and they can be rude with you - and I'm like, hang on, I am an interpreter, I am a professional, stop treating me like that. It can get lonely - you spend your working days with people you barely know, whom you may not see again, then the only time you get to see your friends is after work. And I spent a lot of time on the road, traveling to where my services were needed.

If you have nothing else to do and you're bilingual, then by all means do it for the money, it isn't that bad really. But if you would rather build your career around something else, if there is something else you're far more passionate about, then follow your heart and do that something else which is far more interesting to you. Don't settle for being a legal interpreter if you can get something better. Well, that's just my opinion anyway.

Limpeh: Peter, thank you so much for your stories.