Low Fidelity: Someone Is Selling Tickets They Shouldn't Be Selling. But No One Seems to Be Who They Seem 

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"This is how bands have income, and when it comes to small businesses in San Francisco, it's the only way any of us stay open too," she says. "I'm just appalled. I think if there were an 11th commandment, it should be, 'Thou shalt not sell comps.' I mean, I would actually probably take the one about adultery off and add that instead."

I first reached out to Mutiny Radio on Jan. 6, to ask for a comment on the accusations of scalping. I used the personal address I had for the station manager, Pam Benjamin, as well as "tech@mutinyradio.org" — the address behind the snotty responses to the New Parish folks, the person venue owners had pegged as Spearman.

The response I got appeared to be from Benjamin:

We have been doing this for a while now and I really don't see the problem. I had this idea a longtime ago when I was at Pirate Cat Radio. Monkey wouldn't let us do it and I always thought that was a waste. Just like anyone, we need to make money however we can.

To be completely transparent, we have raised about $2,000 doing this. Its [sic] not a lot of money by SF terms but it helps. I love the promoters that work with us and don't think Bill Graham would care if he was still alive.

Cheers to you too,

- P

This was new. Such nonchalance from the highest person on the totem pole implied that scalping was far from a misstep by one DJ; it was systemic, an accepted practice for fundraising.

We went back and forth over the next two days. (Holliday, upon hearing Graham's name invoked in this context: "I worked for Bill Graham for 14 years and believe me, he would care. He barely believed in promotional tickets to begin with.")

I asked about tax filings for the $2,000, whether it was an officially station-condoned policy, and more. Benjamin was steadfast in her defense: "...these tickets aren't bought, they are [given] to us to promote the bands and their shows. We do all that stuff but if something is laying around we sell them. There is no face value for guest list tickets even. You know these promoter people need to understand their own rules and how they gave us these tickets. This is the age [of] Airbnb economics. It's time to embrace that."

Privately, I questioned the intelligence of any media professional who wanted to maintain a relationship with venue owners in a small city like San Francisco so blatantly disregarding the aforementioned understanding about the nature of promotions, but I didn't question the validity of the email.

Until the real Pam Benjamin called.

This Benjamin, who had only seen my initial email, was calling to say she had no idea what was going on — and that selling promotional tickets was absolutely not a station-sanctioned policy. I forwarded her the correspondence I'd been having with the person I thought was her over the last couple of days, and she called back immediately, obviously upset. Apparently I'd been communicating with the person behind "tech@mutinyradio.org," who apparently changed the name field of the email to appear as Benjamin's personal email.

"This practice has never been condoned nor has any money been seen in the station coffers," says Benjamin, adding with a sad laugh that she would love to stumble upon $2,000. "We are under the Media Alliance 501c3 tax codes so that we can receive donations and have fundraisers. The person you've been communicating with is trying to slur our good name."

So who's behind the "tech" address? Benjamin says no one at the station has had access to the mutinyradio.org domain name since February, which is when she says someone "stole" it from them by renewing it under false pretenses. She later saw the domain name for sale online for $500 and decided to buy it — but by the time the collective decided to go for it, the person had raised the price to $2,000. They decided to pass. The station now operates from the domain names pcrcollective.org and mutinyradio.fm, while its old home, mutinyradio.org, bears lots of Pirate Cat Radio insignia.

Benjamin suspects that the person behind the "hijacking" is Roberts; according to many at the station, he's been known to do this kind of thing before. There's certainly evidence that someone out there is using the Mutiny Radio name, and in at least one instance, there are ties to Roberts: The Twitter handle @MutinyNewsSF, which longtime Mutiny DJ "Will the Stranger" says was hacked or stolen from the station, tweeted out a promotional announcement about Sidestage, Roberts' new company, as recently as Sept. 24. The Facebook page at facebook.com/mutinyradiosf is branded with the same "Pirate Cat presents Mutiny Radio" imagery and writing, and posts mostly classic punk videos and news — Roberts' wheelhouse — and nothing actually related to the station. Will forwarded a list of a half-dozen other "stolen" social media or audio-streaming accounts, many of which appear at first glance to belong to Mutiny Radio, as evidence. Benjamin is careful to state, however, that she does not want to out-and-out accuse Roberts, as the station is in the middle of a legal case against him — a suit that's been stalled since he left the country in 2011.

A search for the owner of the mutiny.org domain name turns up only a Phoenix, Ariz., business called Domains By Proxy, which helps users maintain their privacy; the company's only required to fork over information via subpoena. The IP address of the "tech@mutinyradio.org" emails points toward Google headquarters, meaning only that the emails are hosted by Gmail. The Craigslist ads believed to be from Mutiny are long gone, with apparently nothing cached.