Immigration officials failed to deport a Chinese asylum seeker caught for the second time selling pirate DVDs, including pornography for the "dirty mac brigade".

Zhi Youg Lin, 27, from Peckham was spotted operating in Cox Lane, Chessington on Friday, January 5. On seeing the police, Lin flung his rucksack under a car, which officers later discovered contained over 100 pirate DVDs.

He was fined £850 at Kingston Magistrates Court on Thursday last week but the court heard that this is his second conviction for selling DVDs in the Kingston area inside four months.

The Surrey Comet reported in September that Lin was fined £600 plus £292 in costs for selling pirate DVDs in Kingston town centre. It said at the time that immigration authorities were informed of the conviction, but the Home Office refused to comment this week on what action, if any, it took on the case.

A spokeswoman said: "Anyone breaking the law, irrespective of whether they are a British citizen or an asylum seeker, can expect prosecution and, where appropriate, a custodial sentence and deportation."

Pirate DVD sellers are part of large criminal organisations, according to a spokesman for the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). They are in this country voluntarily and are often working to send money back to China to repay their bond to travel here. If caught, they tend to simply get sent to work in another area of the country.

A FACT spokesman said deportations to China are rare.

"There is an issue with sending people back to China because often the Chinese authorities won't accept them back.

"We are working for tougher penalties and are working with the police to target supply and distribution," he said.

In Lin's case, defence barrister John Middlehurst said that, coming from China, his client had "very little understanding of the concept of intellectual property rights, which is not something that is inherent in the Chinese mindset".

He argued that the counterfeit DVDs were not likely to be mistaken for the real thing, and the pornographic recordings were not anything out of the ordinary. He said: "The adult films were what might be called straightforward - stable fare of the dirty mac brigade."