Seton Hall radio faculty director 'pirates' a half million from WSOU

From Tom Roe

Seton Hall University calls their legal station "Pirate Radio," though it is not, just a metal-loving college radio station. The station's faculty director may have been the only one "pirating" anything at WSOU, The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports.

WSOU (89.5-FM) faculty director Michael Collazo was charged last Thursday with money laundering and theft by deception by the Essex County Prosecutor's Office. In all, he took $550,000 in advertising fees, and sub-carrier rights, Jonathan Casiano's story reports.

Collazo allegedly set up a corporation, Warren Sound Options Unlimited, so that when advertisers wrote checks to WSOU he could cash them. More shockingly, he leased Seton Hall's subfrequencies to Radio Verité, a station serving the Haitian community, and EIES of NJ, which provides radio programming for the blind, and pocketed the money.

Subsidiary Communications Authorization or SCA radio are frequencies attached to FM signals which cannot be heard without special receivers. They are common for reading services for the blind and Muzak, but lately former Haitian microcasters in Brooklyn have been leasing signals after getting busted by the FCC for using traditional FM signals without a license.

Shocking as the theft at the Jersey station may be, it is just a trickle compared to some of the overt payola recently uncovered throughout the radio industry.