A 42-YEAR-old Dudley woman, who was a key member of a pirate radio station, has been handed a conditional discharge by Dudley Magistrates.

Tracey Louise Sarah Bond, of Beech Green, was given the three year conditional discharge, as well as being ordered to pay £2,000 costs, after being found guilty of helping to run the unlicensed radio station.

‘Kriss FM’ had been illegally broadcasting throughout the Walsall area on 95.3MHz since 1999 and was the subject of repeated intervention by Ofcom, following a high numbers of complaints from listeners of BBC Radio WM, who could not hear the station due to interference from the pirate show.

In January 2008, Ofcom officers tracked the illegal transmission to a house in Porter Street South in Dudley, where they found the radio studio base.

Five months later, in June that year, officers issued a search warrant at the Beech Green home of Bond, where they found a number of significant items associated with the radio station, including paperwork, a DJ schedule and a series of adverts for the station.

Following the sentencing, an Ofcom spokesman said: “Pirate radio is a significant problem in the UK’s major urban areas.

“Safety of life services - ambulance, fire, police and air traffic control services - as well as licensed radio stations can suffer interference from these illegal stations.

“We monitor the airwaves 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and work closely with the police to crackdown on the problem. This involves raiding studios and taking them off air, seizing equipment and bringing the culprits to court.”