The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a fine of more than $400,000 against a New York City resident who allegedly operated a radio transmitter on radio frequencies assigned to the New York Police Department (NYPD).
According to a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture issued by the Commission in early April, the operator, Jay Peralta, used the designated frequencies in 2016 to transmit at least nine separate threatening messages to NYPD officers, including false bomb threats and false officer-in-distress calls.
After an investigation by the NYPD and agents from the FCC’s New York Field Office into Twitter postings about an unlawful intrusion of the NYPD’s radio system, Peralta was arrested in September in 2016 and admitted to making the calls on NYPD frequencies. He was subsequently charged on a range of offenses including reckless endangerment, criminal impersonation of an officer and false reporting of an incident.
Read the text of the Commission’s Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture.
