Cleveland, Ohio area residents now have access to over 70 over-the-air channels from northeast Ohio thanks to the efforts of Locast, a nonprofit service that streams local broadcast stations online with the request of a monthly donation.

The Cleveland broadcast market includes the cities of Cleveland, Akron, Ashland, Ashtabula, Canton, Mansfield, and Sandusky and encompasses almost four million viewers. Locast’s app and website use location verification to provide service only to those living or traveling inside one of their 30 service areas. To access Cleveland-area stations, online viewers must be inside Ashland, Ashtabula, Carroll, Cuyahoga, Erie, Geauga, Holmes, Huron, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, Richland, Stark, Summit, Tuscarawas, or Wayne County.

Among the stations included: WKYC NBC 3, WEWS ABC 5, WJW FOX 8, WOIO CBS 19, PBS and PBS Kids, as well as DABL, Univision, Azteca America, CourtTV, Mystery, MeTV, TrueCrime, QUBO, Circle, The CW, BOUNCE, Movies!, LAFF, COMET, cheddar, ION, GRIT, Charge!, and more.

Locast now has more than 2.5 million registered users nationwide in 30 markets reaching approximately half of the U.S. population. In 2020, Locast added over 1 million users. The service selects new cities to cover based on donations and requests. Locast also looks favorably on requests that volunteer a safe and permanent location where it can locate its equipment to receive and stream over the air stations.

The phone line was allegedly cut by a neighbor. (Image: WEWS-TV)

A suburban Cleveland, Ohio man allegedly cut an AT&T line that crossed his property and refused to allow repair crews to repair the damage, claiming they were disrespectful and “didn’t have no class.”

The cable cut left Newburgh Heights resident and AT&T customer Willie Griffin without phone, internet, or cable service for over a week, and set the stage for a neighborhood dispute that eventually brought police to the scene.

A reporter from WEWS-TV in Cleveland achieved a breakthrough after calm negotiations with Ron Quinones, who eventually allowed AT&T crews to restore phone and internet service.

“I never ever, ever experienced anything like this, I just can’t believe that this happening,” Griffin told News 5. “He told the AT&T guy, that yes he cut the line, and that he’s going to cut my neighbor’s line, and any line that’s running though his yard.”

A police report claimed Quinones admitted to officers he intentionally caused the damage, and told police he was advised to do it by an unidentified utility worker.

“[Quinones] said that he complained to another worker about the [leaning utility pole] and all the wires coming off of it and hanging too low to the ground,” the police report states. “The utility worker said that the fastest way to get it fixed would be if [Quinones] cut them because then they would have to come fix them.”

When AT&T crews initially arrived to repair the lines instead of replacing the utility pole, Quinones would not allow them on his property, claiming he feared for their safety and the safety of his garage. The utility pole owner, FirstEnergy, later conducted a full inspection and denied the pole was unsafe.

The cut cable was located at Griffin’s home where AT&T’s network interface box connected the overhead line with the home’s inside wiring. AT&T crews sought to replace the overhead drop line from the utility pole to Griffin’s home, which initially caused Quinones to object because the utility pole serving her home is behind his. After the dispute attracted coverage from Cleveland’s ABC affiliate, Quinones relented.

“If the cable goes through and he can get it up there without damaging my property, I don’t have a problem with it,” Quinones told the station.

No charges appeared to be filed and the only formal rebuke seems to be a warning from both Newburgh Heights police and FirstEnergy advising residents that tampering with utility lines was unsafe and could result in criminal charges.

WEWS in Cleveland found itself mediating a neighborhood dispute over a cut AT&T line. (1:52)

President Donald Trump promised voters during last summer’s Republican National Convention that he would ‘not look the other way’ and ignore Washington politicians that have “sold out to some corporate lobbyist for cash.”

But newly released documents show that while Mr. Trump was delivering his remarks, top Republican officials and some of the nation’s biggest corporate lobbyists were enjoying a plush, corporate funded private hideaway where politicians could safely meet with corporate interests away from the public’s glare.

The Center for Public Integrity could not directly obtain information about the “cloakroom” — the informal name designated by the GOP for the space designed to look like a cross between an elite hotel lobby, a private club, and expensive office space — because the organizers sought to keep it a secret. But an unrelated lawsuit filed in a Ohio court made public important bank records which revealed just how much some of America’s top corporations were willing to quietly spend to keep the Republicans happy.

The top donor was Comcast Corp., which contributed $200,000. Microsoft, the Koch Brothers, and AT&T each donated $100,000. Those companies were joined by large banks, the oil, gas, and pharmaceutical industries, and curiously an $80,000 check from the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, among the top political donors in California. The group has spent more than a quarter-billion dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying to convince lawmakers to allow the Native Americans the right to spread slot machines around the state.

To keep the contributions a secret, Republicans created a limited liability corporation — “Friends of the House 2016 LLC,” according to bank records. This group was not obligated to disclose its funding sources, and fought hard in court to keep the names of its corporate donors from being revealed to the public.

Corporate interests were nervous about sponsoring the 2016 Republican convention that was widely expected to choose Mr. Trump as the Republican candidate. Corporate interests told the New York Times last year they were under pressure to scale back their contributions as the campaign grew divisive. AT&T told the newspaper it was limiting its contributions to convention activity “aimed at benefiting the democratic process.” The company had no comment about how their contribution to fund an exclusive, strictly off-limits to the public-“cloakroom” accomplished that.

Instead of foregoing contributions, the Republicans devised a way to quietly obtain corporate money while giving donors cover from public scrutiny.

“The immediate effect is it looks like it hid certain donors to the convention,” said Lawrence Noble, senior director and general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for campaign finance reform.

One of the designated perks of being a donor to the ‘Friends of the House’ was a free pass to enjoy the facilities for refreshment and relaxation.

“As a sponsor of the hospitality venue, we were invited to use it, as well,” said Jori Fine, a spokeswoman for Health Care Service Corp. The company paid Friends of the House 2016 LLC $100,000, according to bank records, a payment that Fine said “supported hospitality and other events during the 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland.”

Should a donor’s lobbyist or corporate executive bump into top Republican lawmakers inside, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was given his own private space in the “cloakroom,” that was ‘purely coincidental.’ Since donor companies were given access while non-donors were not, lawmakers using the “cloakroom” could easily deduce donors by the presence of their lobbyists or company officials.

Most of the companies who made contributions are still trying to keep it a secret. In addition to an effort to get a Ohio judge to seal the records before they were made public, 15 of the 20 donor companies refused to confirm they were donors and had no comment or did not respond when asked about it.

Marketing materials from the company that constructed the “cloakroom” give the public their only view of its elegance. Members of the public were not allowed inside.

“The convention is one big loophole to the limits of corrupting money on politics,” Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for limits on money in politics told the Center. He is not related to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

The Center for Public Integrity also exposed how companies and individuals like the Koch Brothers claimed they were staying away from contributing to the GOP convention, while eagerly feeding secret contributions to the LLC that benefited it:

Friends of the House 2016 LLC appears to have provided companies an especially discreet opportunity to support the GOP convention.

For several of the companies that didn’t otherwise donate cash directly to the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee — a list that includes 12 of the entities listed in the bank records — there was little or no public evidence of their use of corporate dollars to support of the 2016 Republican convention.

For example, Comcast Corp., which wrote a $200,000 check to Friends of the House 2016 LLC, isn’t listed as a donor by the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee.

Neither is Koch Companies Public Sector, which wrote a $100,000 check to Friends of the House 2016 LLC. In fact, a Koch Industries spokesman in June said the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, well-known Republican megadonors, weren’t planning to contribute to the convention at all.

Neither firm responded to a request for comment about the payments to Friends of the House 2016 LLC.

The majestic space created for politicians and corporate interests to relax together in a familiar “cloakroom” setting was no small undertaking, according to Joe Mineo Creative, the company that transformed the Cleveland Cavaliers’ practice basketball court inside the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland into something that would fit comfortably in a high-end D.C. hotel or private offices for corporate executives. It was with some embarrassment to the Republicans that the company that did the work was sufficiently proud of it to boast about it in marketing materials, giving the public its only glimpse of how more than $1 million in corporate contributions was spent during the three-day convention. When it was over, the “cloakroom” was torn down to restore the basketball court.

It isn’t known if any campaign finance laws were broken as a result of these contributions.

…for AT&T’s complacency.

AT&T will pay $7.75 million to the Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau and to its customers to settle a phone cramming investigation that revealed the phone company allowed drug dealers and money launderers to offer a scam paid directory assistance service for AT&T’s landline customers.

AT&T allowed the scammers to charge many of its landline customers $9 a month for a directory assistance service investigators called “a sham” from day one. AT&T collected a “billing fee” for each charge and collected another $1.50 in “complaint fees” each time a customer complained about the charge on their phone bill.

It took the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to uncover the scam while investigating two Cleveland-area companies — Discount Directory, Inc. (DDI) and Enhanced Telecommunications Services (ETS) for drug-related crimes and money laundering the proceeds.

In the course of seizing drugs, cars, jewelry, gold, and computers (totaling close to $3.4 million) from the companies’ principals and associates, DEA investigators discovered financial documents related to a scheme to defraud telephone customers. The key participants in the scheme told DEA agents that the companies were set up to bill thousands of consumers (mostly small businesses) for a monthly directory assistance service on their local AT&T landline telephone bills. The DEA referred this investigation to the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau in 2015.

AT&T received a fee from the companies for each charge AT&T placed on its customers’ bills. Although DDI and ETS submitted charges for thousands of AT&T customers, they never provided any directory assistance service. Neither DDI, ETS, nor AT&T could show that any of AT&T’s customers agreed to be billed for the sham directory assistance service, but AT&T kept on billing and collecting money from customers anyway, despite their responsibility to ensure the services were legitimate.

“AT&T ignored a number of red flags that the charges were unauthorized, including thousands of charges submitted by the companies for nonexistent, disconnected, or otherwise ‘unbillable’ accounts,” the consent decree stated.

Under the terms of today’s settlement, AT&T will issue full refunds to all current and former consumers charged for the sham directory assistance service since January 2012. These refunds are expected to total $6,800,000. AT&T will also pay a $950,000 fine to the U.S. Treasury. The Enforcement Bureau has also secured strong consumer protections in the settlement that include requirements that AT&T cease billing for nearly all third-party products and services on its wireline bills, adopt processes to obtain express informed consent from customers prior to allowing third-party charges on their phone bills, revise their billing practices to ensure that third-party charges are clearly and conspicuously identified on bills so that customers can see what services they are paying for, and offer a free service for customers to block third-party charges.