Hey, if you don’t have any research, why not just pick some number off the net? Police agencies do:

However bogger Michael Geist thought there was something fishy about the figure and asked for the sources behind the Royal Mounted Police’s $30 billion claim.

The letter came back from red-faced coppers confessing that they made up the figure based what they had read on the Internet.

The RCMP did not conduct any independent research on the scope or impact of counterfeiting in Canada, but rather merely searched a couple news stories.

— anadian coppers admit making up piracy figures, $30 billion figure simply plucked from bottom, By Nick Farrell, The Inquirer, Wednesday 19 September 2007, 08:52

I like the punchline:

Soon they’ll try solving their cases by looking to see who did it on Wikipedia.

And will they change their motto to “we always make up our scam?”

-jsq