‘Mark and Brian’ Get Burned by a Hoax Call : Radio: A ‘real-life’ segment turns out to be a trick by an Air Force sergeant, but ‘it made for great entertainment,’ KLOS claims.

It was dramatic: A caller to KLOS-FM’s popular “Mark and Brian” morning show had his wife on the line and was telling her he wanted a divorce because he knew she’d been cheating on him with his best friend. Listeners heard the whole encounter. It was “real-life and hard-core, one of the most talked-about bits ever,” one of the hosts said later.

It turns out to have been a hoax.

The segment was part of a regular feature on the KLOS (95.5) morning show in which callers are hooked up on the air with spouses, friends, lovers and bosses for encounters covering everything from pay raises to marriage proposals to mending spats. This caller had identified himself as Bill and said he ran a computer company, for which his best friend supposedly worked. Before confronting the woman he said was his wife, he also spoke on the air with the friend and purportedly fired him.

Officials at Edwards Air Force Base have told The Times that the call actually was made by Sgt. Bill Kubecki from his Air Force office phone in the Office of Special Investigations, with two workplace associates playing the parts of the wife and friend. The two accomplices--whose names were not revealed by the Air Force--were paid $100 apiece by the station for their cooperation (KLOS’ standard practice to encourage callers).

The Air Force said “administrative action” was taken against Kubecki.

“It surprised us,” co-host Brian Phelps said when informed by a reporter of the deceit. “We were faked out and probably our listeners were too.”

The incident also was featured in an article that The Times published in October about Phelps and partner Mark Thompson and their unique brand of “voyeur radio.” When contacted by a reporter a few weeks after the call at a telephone number he had given the station, Bill corroborated the story he had told on the air and explained that he had chosen to expose his private life for public inspection because “it seemed like a vengeful, kind of fun thing to do.”

After the article appeared, however, someone who knew Bill called The Times and said the story had been concocted and that Bill worked at Edwards Air Force Base.

After weeks of inquiries, Air Force officials finally confirmed that Kubecki had indeed called KLOS. After a commander’s inquiry, administrative action was taken against Kubecki, said Art Munson, the commander of the Office of Special Investigations. He declined to specify what that action was, citing the Privacy Act.

Kubecki could not be reached for comment.

Janice Kubecki, his ex-wife, said that Kubecki was an 8-year veteran of the Air Force and that he was reassigned to the Munitions Maintenance Squadron earlier this month. Calls to that division confirmed that he did work there now.

Janice Kubecki said she had been upset by the incident. “A lot of people recognized Bill’s voice out here at Edwards, and I’m thinking: ‘People know Bill and they’re going to think it was me he was talking about, not the fake ‘Cynthia,’ ” she said. “I was very annoyed, you can imagine, to hear him lie over the radio. It’s been a nasty situation.”

She said that after the call, she had phoned KLOS and was ignored by a receptionist.

“I said, ‘I am Bill Kubecki’s real wife and this is all a lie, the whole story’s a lie,’ ” she said. “I was told, ‘Well, if they’re interested, they will call you back,’ and they never did.”

When informed of the stunt by The Times last week, the KLOS deejays said that they had been duped by the caller, who they thought sounded convincing.

“I really believed that it was real. That’s why we put it on the air,” Phelps said.

He said they try to prevent such incidents from occurring. “We look out for that and, if we catch them, we hang up on them on the air, (but) we’re fooled from time to time. This can happen.”

Bill Summers, KLOS general manager, agreed, saying that the station tries to weed out phonies but that, inevitably, some of those bent on deception get on the air. There is no way to guarantee authenticity on a live radio show, he said.

“It isn’t anything that we set up, obviously,” Summers said. “They do try to eliminate the things that they feel are people setting them up, but when you’re on the telephone and you’re not face-to-face and can’t tell where these people are calling from, those things are going to happen.”

In any case, Summers said, “it made for great entertainment.”