Stolen cable television decoder boxes were recovered during a raid in York, police said today.

The boxes, which unscramble coded signals for paying subscribers, had been modified so that the user could receive programmes from cable company NTL without paying.

Officers from York police, accompanied by NTL's fraud and investigations department, executed a search warrant on a house in Acomb on Tuesday.

A number of the decoder boxes were seized and arrests made.

A spokesman for York police said: "There has been an increasing number of instances of these decoders being used to bypass the system, which results in the company losing revenue.

"Fraud investigators from the company together with the police are continuing investigations in the York area and further arrests and seizures of these decoders are anticipated."

Anyone with any information about the use or sale of these boxes is asked to contact NTL's confidential fraud hotline on 0800 0967800.

* Two people have been arrested and released on police bail in connection with the raid.