$30k Hit Ordered on Two Labrador Retrievers By Malaysian Mob

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - The Labrador Retrievers are named "Lucky" and "Flo" and reportedly the Malaysian crime syndicate has put a RM100,000 (US$29,240) bounty on their lives. In the past month, the two Black Labrador Retrievers have led police to over $3.5 million worth of pirated, illegal, and child-pornographic DVDs.

L & F are highly specialized sniffer dogs, two of only a few in the world trained to detect the scent of polycarbonate, a chemical used in optical discs (DVDs). The dogs were trained in Ireland and sent to Asia by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in an effort to uncover and quash the piracy syndicate which costs the film industry an estimated $6.1 billion yearly.

Malaysia once held the dubious honor of being the world's No. 1 exporter of pirated DVDs and VCDs. China has since assumed that title, but pirated discs are still abundant in Malaysia.

Since Lucky and Flo were first deployed to work on March 13, they have proven themselves to be a force to be reckoned with, facilitating the arrest of 26 people and seizures worth over $6 million.

Among those items confiscated were more than 1.6 million optical discs, three DVD replicating machines and 97 CD-R burners.

The dogs actually cannot distinguish between fake or real discs but their forte lies in sniffing out secret hideouts that law enforcement officials could not detect.

Authorities have taken the threats on the dogs' lives very seriously and have decided to ship the dogs to New York to fight privacy in America. "We move them around [to keep them safe]," says Nor Hayati of the MPAA.

MPAA president Dan Glickman says, "The dogs are some of the greatest employees we have here at the MPAA."

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