What interested Pen and I was that the Affinity Scam scandal also implicated Gerald Durand and Christopher Pettengill, who were sponsoring the David Strom show on WWTC 1280 A.M. radio (known as the Patriot) from January 2009 into September 2009. In conjunction with the show, Durand and Pettengill, along with Strom, were promoting what the FBI characterized as scam investment seminars, despite the clear indications in July 2009 that there were serious issues with the status and integrity of these two individuals. Clearly by participating in these seminars as the person who introduced them, and using his show to promote and advertise them, along with his website on the WWTC internet site, the radio station and David Strom gave credence and respectability to these two men and to their seminars as safe, as legitimate, and as reputable and expert.
That, effectively, was what Pettengill and Durand were 'buying' from Strom and the Salem network: respectability they did not deserve, and the use of that reputation to persuade the Strom/Salem target largely right wing audience to part with their money. The shows clearly demonstrated the right wing efforts to create fear regarding the economy, and the image of expertise in order to generate interest in the seminars. While slightly more subtle, they followed the same sort of fear-inducement that characterized the Pat Kiley radio shows used in the earlier Cook/Beckman/Pettengill/Durand investment sales, and the earlier Durand/Pettengill shows called Wealth Management, on Salem sister station KYCR.
In fact, David Strom doesn't appear to know anything about the financial services and investment sector, or economics generally, much less the expertise of someone in that business. The attitude Strom expressed to Pen, Dan Browning and I about this appearance of endorsing the expertise of Pettengill and Durand, and the legitimacy of their seminars was 'caveat emptor', if these people get ripped off, too bad for them so long as he and the station made a buck. Yet the usual pro forma disclaimers that would warn listeners were frequently absent from the Strom show as was the usual requisite statement that this was air time purchased like an infomercial rather than part of the Salem programming.
Further, the Strom show represented that it was sponsored not by Durand and Pettengill, but by a non-functional, non-profit educational organization, despite both Pen and I calling the attention of the station and David Strom to this not being a legitimate entity but rather seemed to appear to be a similarly named prestigious educational non-profit - another attempt to give an appearance of undeserved legitimacy to the show, to Pettengill and Durand, and to the questionable seminars they pimped. The use of sounds-alike names similar to legitimate entities was part of the deceptive pattern used by Cook and his colleagues, including Pettengill and Durand.
In fact, the FBI is investigating the transfer of $30,000 a month to Durand and Pettengill, while those two men were allegedly using either that money, or co mingled funds, to pay for the radio show and seminars. Instead of investigating, or ending their association, Salem Communications, and Strom, Durand and Pettengill would hang up on anyone who called during the Strom radio program with a question about their credentials or their investment schemes, past or current.
On his first show after separating from Durand and Pettengill, Strom joked that he needed a sponsor who could pay $10,000 a week to pay for his show. Perhaps coincidentally, the purported monthly figure for radio time paid by Bradlee Dean, of recent prayer scandal fame, who has also left the Salem network, was quoted at $39,000 a month; a very similar fee for approximately the same amount of radio time. Dean had a later two hour time slot on Saturdays, a few hours after Strom's two hour program.
I find this attitude highly unethical. It is even more reprehensible that Strom, who claims not to have researched either the credentials or the companies associated with Pettengill and Durand, or the validity of the fake non-profit, would become the Tom Emmer Research Director for Emmer's 2010 Governor's campaign. Because clearly, Strom doesn't do the research that he should.
However, I find that attitude that anything which puts money in their pockets, no matter who it hurts or how shady, is acceptable to be consistent with the right wing efforts to gut consumer protections, to deregulate and defund the enforcement that would prevent fraud, and to allow and condone risky practices that harm less-sophisticated investors and even occasionally the more sophisticated investors.
I have tremendous sympathy for those investors who were presented with fake documentation, who were profoundly harmed, by Pettengill and Durand, either during the Cook scam, or subsequent activity. According to the FBI agent's affidavit which accompanied the Durand search warrant, the FBI investigation was targeting not only the earlier Trevor Cook/ Pat Kiley/ Bo Beckman/ Chris Pettengill/ Gerald Durand scam that hit the news in July 2009, but the subsequent alleged investment scam activity of Pettengill and Durand into 2011. It also appears, from our sources, that there will be a claw back action to recover the money from the Cook/Kiley et al Affinity Scam that appears to have gone directly from Trevor Cook into the pockets of Durand and Pettengill up until July of 2009, money which appears to have paid for at least in part the David Strom show and the seminars.
For more background, please read the Dan Browning Trevor Cook/Pat Kiley Affinity Scam series at the Star Tribune, and the 10 earlier segments of this and related series on Penigma. The most recent Browning story is here.
"He [Pettengill] faces up to 10 years in prison on the money laundering charge and five years each on the securities fraud and conspiracy charges."
Those possible sentences are just for the Affinity Scam with Cook; the affidavit from the FBI agent for the warrant addressed alleged scams by Pettengill as co-defendant #1 and Durand continuing through the early part of 2011.
I would like to take a moment here to commend the fair and accurate investigative reporting of Dan for having kept this scam on the front burner at a time when too many cases of fraud have had to compete for the too few prosecutorial resources.
I can only say that I am pleased that after far too long, finally Chris Pettengill is going to be behind bars along with scam scumbag Trevor Cook. I look forward to seeing some future action that holds Gerald Durand and Bo Beckman accountable for his conduct, and to seeing the defrauded investors get back whatever money may be recoverable.
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