Man arrested for fraud after posing as Nickelback drummer

A Florida man was arrested on two felony counts of fraud after attempting to purchase $25,000 worth of high-end microphones online by posing as Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair, reports The Smoking Gun.

Forty-five-year-old Lee Howard Koenig was arrested in Port St. Lucie on March 1, after police learned from one of Nickelback’s security specialist’s that Koenig attempted to pass himself off as Adair, with an email request to purchase the equipment from Lewitt Audio in Vienna, Austria.

“Essentially, when he placed the order in Austria, I guess at this level of band … you have a lot of people that work for you. One of the people in his group thought it was out of the ordinary when they were getting contacted as to confirming the order,” Detective Paul Griffith told TC Palm.

When one of the band’s business representatives contacted Adair to confirm the order, Adair said he did not place it. The email address was not Adair’s and Adair does not live at the address listed on the order.

Adair did some Internet research and discovered three different Internet sites connected to Koenig including this Facebook page.

According to the police report, Adair told police that after looking at photos on Koenig’s Facebook page, “the suspect’s drum set was the same configuration as his.” Adair also discovered that the woman listed as his publicist on the order was in fact Koenig’s girlfriend.

Following his arrest, Griffith said Koenig wished to send Adair an apology letter.

Koenig has been arrested for fraud before. He was sentenced to three years in prison in 2009 and ordered to repay $78,000 he was supposed to donate from a benefit concert he held in 2007. The money was to go to the Humane Society of the Treasure Coast, but the charity never received the funds.

Koenig is currently out on $18,750 bail.

[Feature Photo: Port St. Lucie Police]