Pete Seiler was the first GM at Casper 20/Riverton 10.  He operated the stations as kind of a running shell game.  He would take out corporate accounts at local parts suppliers, and at the end of the month when the invoices came in, he would claim to have never heard of "that" corporation.  And neither had the Wyoming Secretary of State office.  Attempts to get court judgements were further thwarted by the fact that the station owned NOTHING. Every piece of equipment in the building was leased (from owner D'Adario's  Atlantic City casino). He didn't like paying for programming either, so he would grab free stuff off the satellite. These adhoc feeds were often on weak transponders and Pete was using a trade-out home dish for reception.  I can remember one fall evening watching a baseball game that would jump every other inning to the Southern Baptist Convention. Eventually he got an ABC affilation agreement.

This is from a contemporary letter, "....Sounds like a big money laundry, for the mob's casino skimming or drug businesses. The mob boys (Antoniak et al) gave Pete (Sieler) a Porsche auto - but he had to fly to Florida to take delivery, and then drive it back. The Porsche is a bit unusual - the windows in the doors won't go down - they are fixed in place, and the doors are hollowed out..."

He was also clever about not paying people for their work.  A couple of times he called me when I was an independent broadcast consultant, and I told him I was glad to help, just pay the cash up front.  It is said that people who were getting paid got cash out of suitcases. While it is illegal to send cash  by FedEx or UPS, certain boxes were known to be delivered to the "wrong" television station during the holiday rush. Certainly the bank accounts ran on empty. Eventually  people that had worked at the station found that employment taxes had not been paid and that they were not entiteled to benefits. This led to a temporary shut down of the station during which the Wyoming Dept of Unemployment was being told that it was not "that" corporation.  Courts determined that the "new" corporation [Wyomedia] was in fact the "old" corporation [Casper Channel 20], (upheld by the Wyoming Supreme Court).

In a letter that was mailed February 5, 1989 -

"Dear Lare"
.....
"The mafia had a visit from the IRS and Federal marshalls driving a truck last week. They cleaned out Channel 20's office furniture, but didn't take the TV equipment. A box of money arrived 2 days later, and the boys went out and bought new office furniture - cash. Nothing has changed. Also, the mafia has been indicted in New York for securities fraud - selling stock in TV stations they have never built or put on the air"

The Riverton Station was run on the same ethic.  Unlike Casper, it was a high power transmitter and used a lot of electricity.  The revolving corporate scam finally convinced PPL to remove the meter until someone would claim responsibility.  Pete went up and by-passed the meter box to get the station back on, as it was also the source for Casper programs.  In those days, PPL actually had service people living in the area and when they saw that television was on the air again, they removed a quarter mile of primary line.  Service was off a year or two before the "corporation" ended up paying for past consumption and put in a large deposit before the wires were strung back up again. ABC network was not notified of the outage and continued making carriage compensation payments.

The City of Riverton provided studio facilities for TV10 as it was proud to have a local operated station. However the sheriff eventually had so many warrants for Pete's boss, Antoniak, that he was planning a raid. Pete got wind of this, loaded up a U-Haul trailer overnight and moved out to Casper. TV10 was off a couple of days again, until a Sony TV set at the Boysen Peak transmitter site was put in to receive channel 20 from Casper. Thats how the co-location of studios in Casper started, a tradition expanded by WyoMedia to include channels 2, 10, 14, 20 and 26.

Pete was getting so well known for his shenanigans in Casper that the "corporation" decided best to move him out of town, to El Centro California.  There he was GM for the NBC affiliate for Yuma AZ. That station was presented as a gift to Las Vegas attorney James Rogers, owner of Sunbelt Communications which has later expanded its holdings in, of all places, Casper Wyoming. However Pete got his reward as well, but first back up 20 years.

In 1968, Harriscorp, owner of KTWO partnered with Pacific Media Corp to purchase KESQ TV3 in Palm Springs. It seems that later Pacific Media Corp purchased the CBS affiliate for El Centro.  Who became their GM? none other than Pete!  Up to his old style, the studios mysteriously got moved overnight from El Centro CA to Yuma AZ. Good thing, as PMC's California corporation license is currently suspended.  Pete is the registered agent for PMC, Vice President and signs the FCC filings. The corporate address is Timmonsville SC, but they are not registered in South or North Carolina [not  "that" corporation].  PMC owner is Robinson O. Everett and [estate of] Kathrine Everett [whose stock is voted by Robinson]. By the way, Robinson is 80% owner of Gocom, which recently held the license for KTWO TV in Casper.

The Everett's are remarkable in the North Carolina legal scene. Katherine died in 1992 but took the bar exam in 1920, jazz age and prohibition era.  Robinson O. is her son after she married lawyer Reuben O. Everett.  She took an ownership interest in UHF television stations in Durham, Greensboro and other NC communities. Her estate gave $14 million to UNC and Duke university. Robinson was in private practice at Durham until appointed chief appeals judge for military courts martial in 1980.  Based on this experience, he required his employees to call him the Judge. Ok, so why have they associated themselves with Pete Sieler [Wikipedia: A shyster is someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law and politics, or a con artist] and a small town Arizona TV station? Certainly not as distinguished as their other undertakings in public service. A check with his law firm Everett, Gaskins, Hancock and Stevens shows he is the only member that participates in criminal appeals.

By the way, the owner of the other TV station in the same small Arizona town is a renowned Las Vegas lawyer who contributed a reported $200 million to various law schools, and the University of Arizona named the school of law for him. Hope Pete enjoyed taking his money as well.  The replacement owner of the Casper operation was Antoniak's Orlando lawyer after he got nailed for money laundering. Could it be when the Feds started impounding the legal fees paid for defending organized crime and drug cases, that lawyers got paid in TV stations instead? All transactions, thanks to Pete, occurred with months of each other in 1988-1989.


 Pete Seiler, cub reporter for the Myrtle Beach Herald.

Pete got moved out of Yuma recently and now in South Carolina serves Greg Everett (son of the Judge) as TV ad salesman and reporter for the Myrtle Beach Herald. In the column he writes about his fifty years of broadcast experience. The first nine years was as a film cleaner for a small cable system in Montana that carried no TV stations, just offered "local origination". Someone in the mafia confused film cleaning with money laundering and his career blossomed.