The Federal Communications Commission is putting both individual property owners and real estate companies on notice that they could face multimillion-dollar fines after field agents traced four alleged pirate radio stations to properties across New York City and its suburbs.<\/p>\n
The Enforcement Bureau issued four new pirate radio warnings Monday covering alleged unlicensed operations in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Mount Vernon. In each case, FCC agents used direction-finding equipment to trace FM signals to specific properties during January inspections.<\/p>\n
The notices are directed not at the alleged pirate operators themselves, but at the people and companies that own or manage the properties where the broadcasts originated \u2014 part of the FCC\u2019s expanded enforcement strategy under the PIRATE Act.<\/p>\n
In Manhattan, agents say they traced an unlicensed station operating on 94.9 FM to West 193rd Street on Jan. 14. Public records identify 558 West 193 LLC as the owner. The FCC says there is no license authorizing a station on that frequency at the Washington Heights property.<\/p>\n
A day earlier in the Bronx, agents tracked a 105.3 FM signal to East 218th Street. The FCC identifies the owner as FRESB Mortgage Trust. As in the Manhattan case, agents determined the transmissions did not qualify for the FCC\u2019s exemptions covering extremely low-powered devices.<\/p>\n
Brooklyn produced another target. On Jan. 21, agents traced an alleged pirate broadcasting on 91.7 FM to Newkirk Avenue. FLGSP 2513-2523 Newkirk Ave LLC is identified as the property owner, while Nieuw Amsterdam Property Management is identified from on-site notices as its manager. Both were named in the FCC warning.<\/p>\n
The fourth case reaches beyond New York City into Mount Vernon, NY. Agents there traced an alleged unlicensed 98.9 FM operation to a Washington Street property on Jan. 13. Unlike the other cases involving corporate property owners, public records identify Clive Ritchie and Michelle Ritchie as the owners.<\/p>\n
The four warnings make clear how the PIRATE Act has expanded the potential liability surrounding illegal broadcasting. Property owners and managers that \u201cwillfully and knowingly\u201d permit a third party to engage in pirate broadcasting can themselves face enforcement action.<\/p>\n
The potential price tag is significant. Each of the notices point out the FCC may issue a fine of $122,661 per day, with a maximum of $2,453,218 if it determines after the response period that a property owner continued allowing pirate broadcasting. The warnings also put owners in a potentially uncomfortable position regarding their tenants or other people using their buildings. Each has 10 business days to provide evidence that pirate broadcasting is no longer being permitted. The FCC is also asking them to identify the individuals responsible for the illegal stations.<\/p>\n
Ignoring the letter doesn\u2019t necessarily provide a way out. The Enforcement Bureau Regional Director David Dombrowski warns that failure to respond could still allow it to conclude that an owner had sufficient knowledge of the pirate operation to support an enforcement action. The FCC says service of the notice itself helps establish the foundation for potential financial penalties.<\/p>\n
In its annual report to Congress<\/a> on pirate radio, the FCC said it issued 28 notices to property owners and managers last year, including 17 connected directly to pirate radio sweeps. But that was down from 41 notices issued to property owners and managers during fiscal 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Federal Communications Commission is putting both individual property owners and real estate companies on notice that they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":893947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,17846,136,44],"class_list":["post-893946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-free","tag-music","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}