The guy on the left, that's Nickelback drummer Daniel Adair.
The guy on the right? That is Howard Koenig, who was just arrested for two felony fraud-related charges by Port St. Lucie police. Koenig tried to purchase $25,000 in music-related equipment.
The investigation began on January 19th, when police were contacted by a band security specialist stating Koenig tried to "fraudulently order drum parts from a company in Vienna, Austria" using Adair's identity.
TC Palm spoke to Tampa Detective Paul Griffith who explained “Essentially, when he placed the order in Austria, I guess at this level of band … you have a lot of people that work for you. One of the people in his group thought it was out of the ordinary when they were getting contacted as to confirming the order.”
According to an affidavit from the case, after the order was placed, a business rep reached out to Adair to confirm the order. Adair obviously had no idea what the order was about, nor did he live at the shipping address, in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Adair conducted a quick internet search and quickly found three Facebook pages matching the address, namely www.facebook.com/OFFICIALWOOKYPAGE. After noticing the drummer in the Facebook page had the same drum set up as his, Adair contacted police. Police were able to trace the IP address of the orders to Koenig's house.
TC Palm reports that Koenig previously was ordered to spend three years in prison and repay $78,000 he fraudulently collected in 2007 for receiving money for a benefit concert that was never put together on behalf of Humane Society of the Treasure Coast.
Koenig has been released from jail on $18,750 bail according to local officials.
