Man charged with fraud for stealing identity of Nickelback drummer
He tried to buy music equipment
A man from Florida has been charged with fraud after he allegedly stole the identity of Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair.
45-year-old Lee Howard Koenig was arrested in Port St. Lucie on Tuesday (1st March) on two fraud charges after for apparently pretending to be Adair to procure $25,000 (ÂŁ20,000) in musical equipment from a company in Vienna, Austria.
The wannabe musician’s haul included several microphones and drum parts that he had arranged to have delivered to his home address.
According to a police affidavit, Nickelback’s security specialist alerted authorities on 19th January when the real Adair was contacted to verify the purchase.
Detective Paul Griffith told TC Palm: “(Lee Howard Koenig) identified himself as Daniel Adair with Nickelback and said that he was looking for some microphones and tried to place an order via an email.
“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.”
Alongside Nickelback’s security, Adair himself conducted some research into the identity theft and found a suspect in Florida who had three websites and a drum set “with the same configuration as his.”
Police investigators later found that the email address did not match Adair’s and the Nickelback drummer didn’t even have a Floridian address. They also located the IP address of the order, which was Koenig’s home.
Koening has been released from the St. Lucie County Jail on $18,750 bail and, according to Detective Griffith, intends to send a letter of apology to Adair.