host Kennard "Ken" Hawkins was appointed the station's general manager; becoming the first African-American to hold that position at a Cleveland radio station. The legal problems for WJMO, and of United Broadcasting itself, deepened into the 1970s. On January 26, 1972, WJMO and WLYT ()—the recently renamed WCUY—were added to a group of five Eaton-owned stations designated for hearing by the FCC. WJMO faced questions over: a possible violation of the equal-time rule and/or the FCC fairness doctrine; the failure to properly file time-brokerage contracts; inadequate monitoring of existing brokered ethnic programming; potential rigging of on-air contests; and misrepresentations of the station's news staff and public affairs programming records. This was later expanded to include a possible "numbers racket" through some religious programming and stock market reports that subversively transmitted information tied to illegal numbers games, following the testimony of several WJMO employees at one of the initial license review hearings. A similar investigation into on-air programs covertly broadcasting gambling information had already occurred at WOOK/Washington, D.C. The FCC's review of WJMO and WLYT coincided with their reviews of WOOK over the aforementioned numbers racket and WFAN-TV/Washington, D.C. over charges of deceptive advertising, as well as three television stations also owned by United: WMET-TV/Baltimore, WMUR-TV/Manchester and KECC-TV/El Centro, California, over allegations that Richard Eaton engaged in bribery with ABC-TV employees so as to gain favorable terms for WMUR and KECC's ABC network affiliations. Not connected to these series of hearings, United's WFAB/Miami would also find itself under FCC investigation starting in 1973 over allegations of fraudulent billing practices. Phone tapping allegations WJMO's legal issues were compounded on September 20, 1973, when an investigation into possible phone tapping resulted in grand jury indictments handed down against station vice president Morris Paul Schechter (who used the professional name Van Lane) and John Rees, chief engineer for WRC (AM)/Washington, D.C., who also did engineering work for United's WOOK. In the fall of 1972, Schechter, Morton Silverman, and attorney Roy F. Perkins Jr.—who had been representing station matters before the FCC before also assuming legal oversight into WJMO's operations—conferred at United's headquarters over possible payola allegations against WJMO general manager Kennard Hawkins. With the renewal hearings for both WJMO and WLYT forthcoming, Perkins consulted a partner in the law firm he was affiliated with over the feasibility of installing a hidden microphone inside Hawkins' office, and connecting it to a secure phone line, so