Back to the Manchester United Newsfeed

Teacher mastermind, 29, behind £240,000 pirate football kit market spared jail after judge admits he is 'alive to the particular problems of prison overcrowding at this time'

Related Topics: Bolton, Marcus Rashford

A teacher who created a £240,000 trafficking racket in pirate football kits has been spared jail after a judge decided the prisons were too full to lock him up.

Arabic tutor Ahmed Hafeji, 29, from Bolton, Greater Manchester ordered huge hauls of counterfeit clothing from Nike, Adidas, and Puma tops, from China to sell on at discounts prices online.

Shirts included fakes featuring the names of Manchester City's Erling Haaland and Manchester United's Marcus Rashford, as well as others like Paris St Germain, and Southampton.

Over a seven year period the father of one who teaches Arabic to pupils in a primary school sold around 12,000 bootlegged items for as little as £20 a time - a quarter of the price charged by the manufactures for the genuine article.