Payola Charges Against Record Promoter Dropped

A federal judge in Los Angeles on Friday threw out payola charges against a San Francisco-area record promoter and dealt at least a temporary setback to the Justice Department’s much-publicized investigation into alleged illegal practices in the recording industry.

Responding to a defense motion, U.S. District Judge Pamela Rymer dismissed three misdemeanor payola counts against Ralph Tashjian of San Mateo on grounds that the grand jury indictment was not specific enough to allow the promoter to defend himself.

‘Distributions of Cocaine’

Tashjian had been charged with “making regular undisclosed payments or distributions of cocaine to program directors so the records he was promoting would be added to radio station play lists,” according to court documents.

Commenting on the judge’s ruling, Tashjian’s attorney, Anthony P. Brooklier, said: “The problem was, the government charged my client with multiple offenses over a long period of time without specifying the dates of those alleged offenses or the records involved. The judge ruled that the charges were too general and didn’t adequately inform the defendant with what he was charged.”

The prosecutor in the case, Richard Stavin, a special attorney for the Los Angeles Organized Crime Strike Force, said the government will file a criminal information next week charging Tashjian with 200 individual counts of payola.

According to Stavin, the dismissal was due to a “weakness in the payola statute,” which addresses only specific incidents and “doesn’t contemplate a scheme or ongoing course of action.”

“The judge suggested that Congress may want to revisit the language of the law, which we would urge also,” Stavin said.

Tax Evasion Counts

Tashjian is set to stand trial, along with his wife, later this month on separate felony tax evasion charges stemming from the payola case. “But the crux of the government’s case are the payola charges,” Brooklier said.

The Tashjians were indicted--along with another record promoter and a former radio station manager--in February, 1988, after a two-year investigation by the Internal Revenue Service under the direction of the Organized Crime Strike Force. Charges against the other defendants are pending.

In announcing the indictments at a press conference at the time, U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner called it the most significant payola case in 15 years.