The FCC may know about something illegal or questionable going on, but take a long time to act, possibly due to funding, and the number of agents the FCC has available. In Cleveland, Ohio, in the mid 1990s, one pirate Spanish speaking radio station signed on in the non-commercial part of the band. The operators got bold and even did interviews with the major daily newspaper, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, who produced a large front-page, top story, article about the success of this station. Soon there was a whole slew of Spanish speaking stations, with transmitters purchased from Canada, as I recall. At least one on them was on the commercial part of the band. While this "wild-west" was aloud to continue, a few other, non-Hispanic stations popped up. One was from a dance club that apparently aired the sound off of their club's audio board and the Cleveland based Rap group, Bones Thugs and Harmony, started their own pirate station to play their music, un-edited. After quite some time, the FCC paid a visit and, "poof", all of these stations were gone. I have a memory that the Rap station was the first to shut down. Maybe they did it themselves, I don't know.