Free Republic

Boston has yet another conservative talk station (where are the liberal ones other than NPR? Oh right, they don't make money). Salem Media's WBIX 1260 (which had been Mickey Mouse operation Radio Disney) is now on the air (not online though?) with the usual lineup found on Salem's "Answer" stations like their 1250 in Pittsburgh. Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Praeger, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt. Apparently a legal show at night, Daily Defense? And news from Salem's townhall.com It was thought the station would go business news, and maybe biz news will be a part of it (Wall St...

Shackled and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Brad Bleidt pleaded guilty yesterday to 115 counts of mail fraud and one count of money laundering tied to a long-running financial scam that bilked more than $27 million from investors - many of them elderly citizens left destitute by his money-hungry ambitions. ``I am guilty, and I think the healing process should start with my admission,'' the 51-year-old Bleidt told U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston's federal court. But some of his scam victims expressed disappointment at Bleidt's proposed sentence under the plea agreement: 11 years and three months. Judge Young...

BOSTON (AP) -- A former investment firm manager who confessed to stealing more than $27 million from investors, including his mother, was set to plead guilty on Tuesday. Bradford Bleidt, 51, manager of Allocation Plus Asset Management, attempted suicide in November after he mailed taped confessions to securities regulators, family members and business associates. He was scheduled to plead guilty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday afternoon, according to the court calendar. Bleidt, of Manchester-by-the-Sea, is charged with 115 counts of mail fraud and a single count of money laundering. It was not immediately clear whether he would plead guilty...

Brad Bleidt rationalized his heavy drinking and an apparently busted marriage on the ``magnitude'' of a Ponzi swindle that left him in a ``hell of guilt,'' he says on a tape intended to be his last words to his wife. ``I've lived with that horror of the day of reckoning for years and that's sort of where the drinking's come from and me being distant and me being removed,'' Bleidt said in the rambling message to Bonnie Bleidt left just hours before he botched a suicide bid. Bleidt gave little chance for his wife to brace herself before launching into...

Christopher Egan said Thursday that he has backed out of plans to purchase business radio station WBIX (AM 1060, Boston) in the wake of the investment scandal and attempted suicide by its current owner, Bradford C. Bleidt. Egan, the son of EMC Corp. founder Richard Egan, announced he was withdrawing from the deal to clear the way for a court-appointed receiver to recover assets of investors that Bleidt has admitted to cheating. ''I am very disappointed that this deal cannot go forward, but it is more important that investors cheated by Brad Bleidt have an opportunity recover some of their...

Regulators are scrambling to determine how much money disgraced radio-station owner and self-anointed financial guru Brad Bleidt may have swiped to start his mini-media empire - and whether investors will ever get a dime back. ``We're going to do everything we can to recover the money,'' said (MA) Secretary of State William Galvin. Bleidt, 50, allegedly tried to commit suicide last week after sending a tape to regulators on which he claimed he stole tens of millions of dollars from clients of his Boston-based financial management firm Allocation Plus Asset Management Corp. By yesterday, regulators identified a handful of banks...