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Gregory Kerber, a Cohoes resident, served as the company's chief executive and Richard Saxton, a Saratoga Springs resident, served as financial officer. Each of the men was charged with two counts of grand larceny, one count of money laundering, one count of falsifying business records, and two counts of offering a false instrument for filing. Those charges are all felonies.
The pair has also been charged with several misdemeanors including criminal contempt, failure to withhold income taxes, and failure to pay benefits.
The charges are related to tax filing and payroll reporting by the company in the third and fourth quarters of 2006, as well as the transfer of funds following the sale of Wurld Media assets in the early summer of 2007.
The company, a peer-to-peer distributor of music, movies, games, and television shows, was purchased earlier this year by the New York-based ROO Group. In July, ROO paid an approximate $4.3 million, consisting of approximately $3.2 million in cash and the issuance of 655,000 shares of common stock of ROO. Kerber established Wurld Media in 1999 with Kirk Feathers, president and chief technology officer. Best known for its Peer Impact product, creating the first legal peer-to-peer network to have distribution agreements with all four major record labels, Wurld Media employed about 35 employees.
Four of the company's employees filed a class-action lawsuit in December 2006 charging the company failed to pay them for work dating back to May 2006 and failed to add deducted wages to their 401K plans from March 2006 in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The investigation remains open.
