KUALA LUMPUR: King of Pop Michael Jackson's death has generated a huge demand for his songs but pirates ready to cash in were foiled with the arrests of three men. Police seized over 100,000 pirated CDs including more than 10,000 copies of CDs with MJ's songs.

The trio, believed to have raked in at least RM1mil a month, had been operating for a year at a double-storey house in Pandan Indah when police moved in yesterday.

In the 2pm raid, a team from the federal commercial crimes investigation department led by Inspector Joel Teo nabbed the trio who were in the midst of packing the CD's into plastic covers.

The team seized Michael Jackson's hot-selling compilations titles such as King of Pop and Greatest Hits and over 90,000 pirated copies of Chinese pop artistes.

A 26-year-old local said to be a supervisor for the syndicate and two Bangladeshis aged 20 and 30 were nabbed in the raid.

Initial investigations revealed that the syndicate sold the CDs for between RM7 and RM10 each. The syndicate distributed the pirated CDs throughout the country.

It is learnt that the syndicate rented the house as a storeroom-cum-packing premises and manufactured the optical discs elsewhere.