 Lucky and Flo are being kept in a secret location |
Two sniffer dogs have been so successful hunting pirated films in Malaysia that crime bosses have put a price on their head, officials say. The black Labradors, Lucky and Flo, made dangerous enemies this week after their first bust, discovering about a million pirated DVDs and CDs.
Authorities say there is now a bounty on offer to anyone who eliminates the dogs, though the amount is not known.
The animals are being kept in a secret location with increased security.
"The dogs are a genuine threat to the pirated disc syndicates, thus the instruction to eliminate them," Firdaus Zakaria, enforcement director at the Ministry of Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs, told the New Straits Times.
Piracy hub
Six people were arrested when the dogs led handlers to a stash of pirated material, thought to be worth up to $3m (�1.5m), in Malaysia's southern city of Johor Baru on Monday.
The animals were trained in Northern Ireland to identify the smell of polycarbonates - chemicals used in the disc manufacturing process.
Malaysia is one of the hubs of Asia's huge trade in pirated films, music and games.
The Motion Picture Association of America says big entertainment studios lost $1.2bn (�600m) to movie piracy in the region last year.
A spokesman for the MPAA said Malaysia is the first country in the world to use dogs to detect fake discs.
The dogs are being loaned to Malaysian police on a one-month trial from the MPAA, which is ramping up efforts to fight counterfeiting.
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