Record Promoter Pleads Guilty to Payola Charges

A former Encino resident Tuesday pleaded guilty in federal court to charges that he failed to disclose making payments to radio station program directors so they would air the records he was promoting.

Independent promoter William Craig, 44, was among four people indicted on payola charges by a Los Angeles federal grand jury in February, 1988. It is the failure to disclose payola, not the paying of it, that is a violation of federal law.

At the time of the indictment, U.S. Atty. Robert Bonner called it the nation’s most significant payola case since the early 1970s. Bonner said virtually every major record company had hired Craig and another defendant, Ralph Tashjian of San Mateo, to promote their records, but there was no evidence the companies knew their money was used for illegal payola payments.

In return for pleading guilty to one count of failing to disclose payments and two counts of assisting in the preparation of a false income tax return, Craig faces a maximum sentence of three years in federal prison.

Craig and Tashjian had been accused in an eight-count indictment of making illegal payments totaling nearly $300,000 to nine program directors in the South and West between 1980 and 1986. None of the alleged recipients of the bribes were indicted.

Prosecutors said the tax charges against Craig stemmed for returns he prepared for his company, Bill Craig Enterprises, that listed payola payments as legitimate business expenses.

In addition to Craig and Tashjian, those indicted last year included Tashjian’s wife, Valerie, and George Wilson Crowell, former vice president and general manager of radio station KIQQ in Los Angeles.

Ralph Tashjian pleaded guilty last May to one misdemeanor payola charge and two felony tax and obstruction-of-justice counts. The indictment against his wife was dismissed. The case against Crowell is pending.

Both Ralph Tashjian and Craig worked out of the Los Angeles office of another independent promoter, Joseph Isgro, who has been described by prosecutors as a central figure in the grand jury investigation.

An NBC news telecast has linked Isgro to organized crime. Isgro has denied any such link.