Here is the 
civil forfeiture complaint filed to seize Free Radio Santa Cruz’s gear on September 29. It makes for interesting reading. Some points of note:
The FCC unmasked one of Freak Radio’s volunteers (Vinny Lombardo, aka “V-Man”) in 2000 with the help of a helpful Santa Cruz Police officer (Detective Sepulveda), who sent the FCC a 1996 news article containing Vinny’s picture. FCC field agent William Zears then looked at voter registration records to tie the V-Man to the station. Robert Duran (aka “Skidmark Bob”) was unmasked in a later article; both identities were further cross-checked using California DMV records.
However, the affidavit ties Vinny and Robert to the station during its early years (1995) – before the two had even met, and the document itself only covers the FCC’s investigation over the last four years.
Visits to Free Radio Santa Cruz were made by field agents on the day after the FCC authorized the LPFM service (January 21, 2000) and on the day of the FCC’s localism hearing in Monterey, CA (July 21, 2004).
In 2002 a neighbor complained about “interference to FM broadcast reception” in the neighborhood. This sounds worse than it is: the neighbor, being next door (or across the street), found him/herself plagued by “blanketing interference,” which is common to any working transmitter. He/she could have solved the issue by contacting the station collective and working out the problem with them (even moving their radio to another location in their house would have sufficed), but instead he/she tattled to the FCC.
Assistant U.S. District Attorney Jocelyn Burton began building the civil case against the station in August of 2003. During field measurements made by FCC field agent David Hartshorn that month, the station was both splattering onto adjacent channels and emitting a spur on 192.6 MHz (in the television band). The spur, however, was extremely weak. Yet, when the FCC visited the station in May of 2004, agent David Hartshorn “stated that he was not aware of any [interference] complaints” when directly asked by Skidmark Bob.
Pamera Hairston, of the FCC’s Office of General Counsel, inquired into the status of the station this past May, suggesting there was direction on the case from D.C.
San Francisco FCC District Office director Thomas Van Stavern is a fan of the Santa Cruz IMC: once he figured out it existed he surfed it regularly to collect “evidence” on Freak Radio’s operational status.
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