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Boston Man Owes $10,000 in Pirate Radio Case
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Richard Clouden will have to pay 10 grand for operating that unlicensed radio station near Boston.
Michael Moffitt, the acting regional director of the Northeast Region of the FCC Enforcement Bureau, issued the fine for repeated violations involving an operation at 101.3 MHz, transmitting from the neighborhood of Dorchester.
The case started almost exactly a year ago. In early July of 2007, a lawyer for an area station complained to the FCC. Agents from the Boston office used mobile direction finding equipment to isolate the signal to an antenna on the roof of a multi-unit commercial building on Blue Hill Ave. in Boston.
According to the commission, its agents were led by a business owner there to Richard Clouden, who worked at another business called Technique Collision. Clouden, they said, told them he owns and operates the station but didn’t have access to the transmitter site, and that the studio was in the Roxbury section of Boston.
The FCC sent him a notice of unlicensed operation but got no response. It said unauthorized operation continued in August, when agents tried to visit the studio but no one answered. The operation was still on the air this March. The commission returned to Clouden’s place of work and asked to conduct an inspection of the studio; following him there, they inspected it. Clouden again admitted to operating the station, the FCC stated in its summary.
Clouden did not reply to an FCC notice of apparent liability this spring, and the commission now has confirmed the $10,000 fine.
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