We’ve all been there. Sitting in our bedrooms, late at night, wishing to the heavens that one day we could be cool enough to be in the utterly mind-blowing band that is Nickelback. Their seminal song “Rockstar” playing on repeat, and dreaming about that tour bus full of old guitars and a credit card that’s got no limit.
Well one man in Florida decided to do what was necessary to accomplish that dream. Lee Harvey Koenig began impersonating Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair and ran up a bill of $25k buying drum parts and several microphones, from a company in Austria.
The fraudulent activity came to the attention of the band when one of their business representatives was contacted by the Austrian company and asked to confirm the order. The representatives thought the purchase was a little out of the ordinary and asked Adair himself about it.
The case was broke by Adair, who took it upon himself to do some internet sleuthing and track down some suspects. In what we can only imagine was basically like a poor man’s version of the MTV show Catfish, Adair and his security person tracked down a drummer in Florida with three websites, one of which is www.facebook.com/OFFICIALWOOKYPAGE. At time of publishing, the page had a whopping 23 likes.
Adair noted that that the suspect’s drum set was the same configuration as his, and then presented his internet stalking research to the police. Police determined Koenig was the drummer in the band from the websites Adair provided. They also researched the IP address used for the order, tracking it to Koenig’s address.
The police arrested Koenig after carrying out a search warrant in his house. This is not a first for Koenig who was numerous previous convictions for fraud. In 2009, he was ordered to spend three years in prison and repay $78,000 he fraudulently collected in 2007.
Law enforcement officials had investigated Koenig after a collecting money for a supposed benefit concert he was to put on for Humane Society of the Treasure Coast. He also pretended to work for Indian Riverkeeper advocacy group, and sold space for advertisements in concert programs, but never did the work.
Don’t worry though, Koenig now seems to have finally learnt the error of his ways, and even wants to apologise to Adair!
Meanwhile the Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair, formerly of 3 doors down, is putting the whole ordeal behind him and is gearing up for Nickelback's US tour in support of their upcoming album Feed the Machine which is due out this summer.
Photo Cred: OverdueBook
