Thanks to inflation, the maximum penalties that the FCC can issue to someone who allows a pirate radio operation on a property has just gone up.
Those numbers, as of Jan. 15, are now about $116,000 per single violation and about $2.3 million total.
No landlord or property owner has been hit with a fine yet, but these are the scary numbers that the commission uses in its letters to people it believes have been harboring illegal broadcasters, under provisions of the PIRATE Act passed unanimously by Congress and signed into law by President Trump three years ago.
The commission’s latest letter was sent to Sandra Flippo of Thumber Properties in Claremore, Okla. It said that agents from the Dallas Office of the Enforcement Bureau traced FM signals on 100.7 to a property on Utica Ave. in Tulsa owned by Thumper. Recipients of the FCC’s letters have 10 business days to respond.
According to the commission’s pirate enforcement database, only one pirate forfeiture has been issued in recent years; it was for $10,000, and it was against an operator rather than a property owner. There have also been a handful of consent decrees, resulting in payments of up to $5,000.
