# Dude steals millions of dollars of towers, gets away with it



## wokofshame (Jan 18, 2019)

http://wirelessestimator.com/articl...contractor-takes-ownership-of-40-plus-towers/
https://www.fcc.gov/wireless/suppor...-resources/antenna-structure-registration-asr

>This guy is my hero. Just to provide some background, there are three companies that own almost all the towers in the US. These are the most prick, asshole evil companies you have ever heard of, they do everything to screw the tower climbers working on their piles of shit risking their lives out of their rightful money. I think you can still exploit the same loophole this cat did, one would need to set up a FRN# with the FCC but I believe that one is also easy. The govt is shutdown currently so you can't register shit, but explore the 2nd link. Fuck the tower companies>


A Wisconsin wireless contractor discovered a flaw in the FCC’s Antenna Structure Registration (ASR) database, and changed the ownership of more than 40 towers from multiple carriers and tower owners into his company’s name during the past five months without the rightful owners being notified by the agency, according to FCC documents and sources knowledgeable of the illegal transfers.
Sprint, AT&T and key tower companies were targeted in the wide-ranging thefts.
The unlawful assignments also created a dangerous condition for aircraft since an FCC investigator was relying upon statements from the new owner, William M. Nix, 39, President of Aura Holdings of Wisconsin, Inc. (Aura), that he would repair obstruction lighting on a 1,100-foot tower, but he had no intentions of ordering the equipment to complete the repairs by July 1 because he neither owned the structure nor could fund the repairs that would cost over $21,000.





William Nix
Senior FCC communications advisor Neil Derek Grace informed Wireless Estimator on June 15 that the Commission is aware of Nix’s “attempted” ownership changes, but declined to answer whether the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau will be issuing a Letter of Inquiry to Aura and citing the contractor with a Notice of Apparent Liability along with a fine.
If the FCC were to act against Nix for falsifying documents, they would be required to refer their investigation to the Department of Justice to charge him under U.S. Code, Title 18, § 1001 which is punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment of up to five years.
Grace would not identify whether any individual ever fraudulently changed tower ownership in the FCC’s database.
As of Friday, there were still 13 towers in the database belonging to Aura, and Grace said in an email that “the Commission has and is in the process of reverting all of the ownership statuses back to their original owners.”
By Monday morning, Aura’s remaining portfolio of towers was returned to their rightful owners.
It is unknown why Nix changed the ownership of the structures or what benefits would be derived by being able to identify that Aura owned a $12-plus million group of towers.
Although the ASR database identifies the owner of the tower, it is not legal proof of ownership but allows for a chain of correspondence to ensure compliance with all FCC requirements that also incorporate other federal regulations.
*FCC allows instantaneous ownership*
Changing ASR ownership is an easy process by applying online for an FCC Registration Number (FRN) which is instantly granted whether the factual or inaccurate information is provided. Then, once logged in, an FRN holder can submit a form stating that they are the new owner of any or multiple structures in the database.
As soon as it is submitted, the change is immediately reflected in the ASR.




Although this Florida tower was not one that Aura Holdings of Wisconsin illegally took ownership of, there was an ownership change submitted on April 20, according to its history log, but it doesn’t appear that a _Change of Ownership Letter_ was sent. When the broadcast tower was sold in 2004, a letter was sent to the assignor.
Although Grace said that owners are notified if a change is made in the system, two tower owners whose structures’ ownership was changed by Nix informed Wireless Estimator they were never informed with an email or through regular mail, or they would have immediately acted.
Previously, the FCC would notify the assignor with a_ Change of Ownership Letter_, alerting them that the agency processed an application to change the ownership.
“Therefore, you are no longer listed as the owner on this antenna structure,” the letter states, and the assignor was asked to notify the Commission if that was incorrect.
The date the letter was sent was typically the following day after the ownership change, and a copy of it was immediately available along with other registration data, as recorded in a 2013 ownership change for this American Towers, LLC site.
However, when Nix was changing ownerships, there was no _Change of Ownership Letter_ sent for 12 sites reviewed by Wireless Estimator, such as this Ocala, Fla. Sprint site.
To test the ASR’s notification process, on Friday, an owner of two companies, each one having an FRN, had one company legally change the ownership of the other company’s tower. They said that the acquiring company received instant notification that the property transfer had been completed; however, the assignor did not receive information that an assignment of ownership had been made, and would not have known about it if it had been a fraudulent transfer. Also, the history log showed that no _Change of Ownership Letter_ had been sent.
“This is unacceptable if it is correct,” said an executive of a top four tower company. “Why is the onus upon the rightful owner? I believe it would be easy to notify the current owner’s representative online and have them log in and approve or reject the transaction before it’s changed in the database.”
The FCC was alerted by Wireless Estimator Friday that the _Change of Ownership Letter_ is still not being sent.
*A remaining new build request is riddled with concerns*
As of June 21, the FCC has purged all of Aura’s allegedly filched structures from their database and returned them to their original owners, but an application for a new antenna structure in Broward County, Fla. by Aura submitted on Feb. 7 is still pending.
Nix’s registration request is questionable for several reasons; the most obvious is that there is currently an AT&T Long Lines tower with its microwave feed horns stripped at that location that is not listed in the ASR database.
Also, the self-supporting structure might still be owned by American Tower Corporation, although the company did not reply to a request for verification. American Tower bought the majority of AT&T’s cold war-era long distance microwave structures in the late 1990s and sold off a number of them beginning in 2002.
Although Nix’s request is for a height of 213 feet, requiring obstruction lighting, his application stated that there would be no marking and/or lighting.
He also stated that he was not submitting an environmental assessment for a site that is in an environmentally sensitive area of the Everglades Wildlife Management Area.




Aura Holdings of Wisconsin wants to build a new site in an environmentally sensitive area where there is an AT&T Long Lines tower that might be owned by American Tower Corporation.
*Aura’s corporate address is an unauthorized mailbox on a site fence*
Nix, in an email, said he wasn’t aware of an investigation by the FCC and declined to answer questions and address allegations that were provided to him in writing by Wireless Estimator.
Aura does not have a website, although Nix has a Facebook page where he states that he is CEO & President at Aura Group, Inc.




Nix’s corporate address is a Wisconsin site that he does not own
Aura registered its corporationin Wisconsin as Aura Holdings of Wisconsin, Inc. on Sept. 23, 2016, with a business address listed as 7284 Patton Rd., Deforest.
However, the address is a tower site owned by Subcarrier Communications of Old Bridge, N.J. and, according to a company executive, Nix, is illegally using that address and does not have any tenancy or other interests in the property.
“In fact, we had hired him as a contractor to do some site maintenance last year in Minnesota and were very unhappy with his work. After he was asked to never set foot on any of our sites, he continued to change locks and enter and create problems for our tenants. One incident involved taking FBI radios offline, and I believe they are currently investigating. We have filed trespassing charges against Nix,” said Subcarrier President John Paleski.
“Twice he put a mailbox on the fence that we removed, and he also changed the locks for that site,” said Paleski.
In January, Nix, according to sources, came to Florida to provide services to Crown Castle as a vendor partner of FPL Fibernet. He had requested quotations from FPL Fibernet for two 1G fiber lines for Aura that would be installed at two Crown Castle tower locations, one an AT&T Long Lines cell tower with multiple tenants in Margate.
Crown Castle had acquired FPL Fibernet in late 2016 for $1.5 billion.
According to an FPL Fibernet spokesperson, the Jan. 4 order that resulted in charges of $3,720 per month was never completed.
Crown Castle did not respond to multiple requests for information.
*Nix informed FCC investigator that he owned a tower he illegally transferred*
On Jan. 10, FCC agent John Kuzma out of the agency’s Chicago office visited a tower in Footville, Wisc. after a pilot reported that the lights on the 1,100-foot tower were out, and he confirmed that neither the daytime nor the nighttime lights were operational.
On Jan. 12, Kuzma called Nix who was listed as the contact for Aura, the owner of the structure.




Nix informed Kuzma, according to a report, that “he had recently acquired the tower and was aware that the lights were out. Mr. Nix said that the tower had been vandalized and that he had the equipment necessary to repair the lights but would not be able to repair them until Spring when it would be safe for technicians to climb the tower. Agent Kuzma told Mr. Nix that a reasonable timeframe to get the tower lights repaired would be May 2017, and told Mr. Nix to update him with the status of the repairs.”
On March 20, Kuzma emailed Nix requesting a status update, and Nix replied, stating that the light would be repaired by July 1.
On May 19, Kuzma was contacted by a staff attorney at FCC headquarters and learned that the FCC had found that “William Nix had changed the ownership information on many antenna structure registrations to Aura Holdings and that Aura Holdings had no legitimate ownership for any of the towers.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced yesterday that he intends to appoint Rosemary C. Harold to serve as chief of the agency’s Enforcement Bureau.
Harold, a former journalist, is an attorney with experience within the FCC and in private practice.
“This agency has a critical role to play in enforcing the law to protect consumers and support competition in the communications marketplace,” Pai said. “Our Enforcement Bureau has been getting back on track in recent months, and I am confident in Rosemary’s ability to continue this progress.”


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## Coywolf (Jan 19, 2019)

Haha, awesome.Reminds me of that story where the dude changed the corporate mailing address of some huge company to his house, and got all their mail for months. Literally taking a page out of Dead Kennedys book.


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## Deleted member 22934 (Jan 19, 2019)

Your title is misleading. He didnt get away with anything. The registry corrected the flaw that he exploited and everything was put back into the true owners names. 

I highly doubt he aquired any contracts or leased space on the towers to anybody. The whole thing seems stupid. It'd be like if you found someones vehicle title and decided to put it in your name. And then they took you to court for it saying that you neither posses, or purchased the vehicle. Who would be stupid enough to do that? And whats the point?


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## Deleted member 20 (Jan 19, 2019)

Its the sheer audacity of the whole thing that I applaud as 
It takes hutzpah to try a play like this. Few have the guts to try to beat them at their own game & even fewer csh in but its a hell of a story. I personally know someone who took 85 houses by adverse possession & rented them out. He got a few deeds & was getting $50k a month but ended up getting 5 years in jail. It still took huge balls for any man to do anything on this scale knowing the risk.


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## Deleted member 22934 (Jan 19, 2019)

They would have to know going into it, that theres no way they could get away with it. The Owners of such towers lease space on their towers to cell phone companies, cable companies and government agencies. And they probably have a lease agreament with the owners of the land in which the tower sits. So they're in contact with, and agreement with anybody who has any part of all transactions reguarding the structure.

Now for some bold faced IDIOT to Change the name on the ownership in whatever database, is pure fucking stupidity. All he did was draw a big x on his own back and ask them to fuck with him. What a fucking moron... 

Now if he had convinced someone he was the owner of the tower and rented them space on it to, lets say, a radio station for their transmitter and installed it using his own climbers and successfully collected rent off someone elses tower without them noticing, thats the only way it could be profitable.

Reguardless, Crime never pays. At one time I was facing 9 felony charges and the whole case got dropped. Shortly thereafter I was charged with 2 felonies from a totally different incident. And let me just say this... If people truely knew how severe the consequenses are, and how long they will eventually pay for their actions, and in how many different ways it will effect the rest of their life... Im possitive, nobody would ever break the law. I don know why anybody would want to steal something. When it catches up with them, and I dont say IF, because its usually WHEN, but when things finally catch up with people, theres usually hell to pay. Karma always catches up with people. And once you have a reputation as a theif, or an abuser, or a predator... People will go out of their way to make sure that your reputation follows you around. You'll loose potential friends, potential jobs, loss of income, loss of opportunity, backlash from the public, and hostility from people in general. 

When they say, everything you do comes back tenfold... I think it really depends who you piss off. If you piss off the wrong person, it can litterally come back on you, ten thousand fold.

And bad always comes back on you ten times as much good. If your in business and you do one person good and solid, they might tell one or two people and give you a good referal. If you do one person wrong tho, they tell EVERYBODY! Bad Karma and good karma come back totally different. Good karma might come back tenfold. Bad karma might come back tenfold, every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year until its ten thousand fold or a hundred thousand fold. People will team up on you and make it the reason, for them and their friends and everyone they can round up to get together and figure out how theyre gonna make you pay for whatever yo did to piss them off.

Ive seen people get together and do some downright ruthless shit to get back at someone who did them wrong. Besides rape and murder and end up in prison, the worst thing you can do for yourself is to piss people off.


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## Deleted member 22934 (Jan 19, 2019)

Take it from me, believe me, one of the worst things you can do is steal something from somebody. Not always, but MOST of the time, people eventually figure you out. And theres no limit to how many ways somebody can make your life miserable. People who normally wouldnt break the law, can go full on psycho on you and have the full support of most people by playing the whole "doing it for the right reasons" card. You get enough people working against you and theres no limit to the problems they can cause. Your life can turn into a full blown nightmare pretty quickly.

What this article doesnt tell you, is that this dumbass probably went out of business after this situation affected his reputation, and for the next ten years he's reminded of his mistake everyday. And after pissing off the rich bastards who actually owned these things, they made his life a living helll and now he's broke and has no girlfriend and can barely afford a car... See they dont tell you the rest of the story. Dont fuck with people who have money. They can afford to make your life hell. And Old people especially, have nothing better to do with their time, than to ruin your life.


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## wokofshame (Jan 20, 2019)

*It’s unlikely that company that stole 42 towers on paper will pay a $236K FCC fine*
In Featured News by Wireless EstimatorApril 9, 2018
The FCC has proposed a penalty of $235,668 against Aura Holdings of Wisconsin, Inc. for the willful and repeated failure to provide truthful and accurate information to the Commission in submitting false and misleading information in 10 different change in ownership applications on the FCC’s antenna structure registration (ASR) website.




William Nix
Last June, Wireless Estimator broke the story of the FCC investigation of Aura’s president, William Nix, who allegedly changed the ownership of more than 40 towers from multiple carriers and tower owners into his company’s name during a five-month period without the rightful owners being notified by the Commission.
However, the FCC might find it difficult to effectuate notification service with their certified letter to Aura since it was sent to an address that Nix illegally uses for his corporate address – a rural tower site off of Patton Rd. in Deforest, Wisc. owned by Subcarrier Communications of New Jersey.
In June or earlier, the FCC became aware that Nix was illegally using that self-supporting tower site address and did not have any tenancy or other interests in the property that has a small unmanned equipment shelter.
In addition, even if Nix is served through a substitute service, it is unlikely that he will be able to pay the fine since he reportedly oftentimes sleeps in his vehicle, an equipment building or other transient location.




Nix’s corporate address where the FCC sent its NAL is a Wisconsin site that he did not own.
Aura Holdings incorporated in Wisconsin on Sept. 23, 2016. Since then, the company hasn’t filed an annual report.
In the Notice of Apparent Liability, the FCC said Nix had illegally filed 42 changes of ownership. Sprint, AT&T and key tower companies were targeted in the wide-ranging thefts.
It is not known if the FCC referred their investigation and findings to the Department of Justice where Nix could be charged under U.S. Code, Title 18, § 1001 which is punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment of up to five years.
The NAL doesn’t provide a motive as to why Nix changed the ownership of the structures or what benefits would be derived by being able to identify that Aura owned a $12-plus million group of towers.
Although it addresses how an individual can falsify ownership, it doesn’t identify whether or not the correct owner is notified of the change application.
The FCC has maintained that owners do get a notification, but Subcarrier Communications, who initiated the Commission’s investigation, said they never received any written or email correspondence when Nix transferred numerous of their towers into Aura’s illegal portfolio.
To test the ASR’s notification process, last June, an owner of two companies, each one having an easily obtained FCC Registration Number (FRN), had one company legally change the ownership of the other company’s tower. They said that the acquiring company received instant notification that the property transfer had been completed; however, the assignor did not receive information that an assignment of ownership had been made, and would not have known about it if it had been a fraudulent transfer. Also, the history log showed that no _Change of Ownership Letter_ had been sent.
The FCC’s investigation began on Jan. 10, 2017 when FCC agent John Kuzma out of the agency’s Chicago office visited a tower in Footville, Wisc. after a pilot reported that the lights on the 1,100-foot tower were out, and he confirmed that neither the daytime nor the nighttime lights were operational.
On Jan. 12, Kuzma called Nix who was listed as the contact for Aura, the owner of the structure.
Nix informed Kuzma, according to a report, that “he had recently acquired the tower and was aware that the lights were out. Mr. Nix said that the tower had been vandalized and that he had the equipment necessary to repair the lights but would not be able to repair them until Spring when it would be safe for technicians to climb the tower. Agent Kuzma told Mr. Nix that a reasonable timeframe to get the tower lights repaired would be May 2017, and told Mr. Nix to update him with the status of the repairs.”
On March 20, Kuzma emailed Nix requesting a status update, and Nix replied, stating that the light would be repaired by July 1.
On May 19, Kuzma was contacted by a staff attorney at FCC headquarters and learned that the FCC had found that “William Nix had changed the ownership information on many antenna structure registrations to Aura Holdings and that Aura Holdings had no legitimate ownership for any of the towers.”
Nix did not respond to a request from Wireless Estimator regarding the NAL.


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