p2pnet.net News:- While Organized Music raves about the thieving, cheating scum who share music online, depriving musicians of their rightful dues, it seems one of its members tried hard to screw elderly Sam Moore of ‘Soul Man’ and ‘Hold On! I’m Comin’ fame out of his pension.

At the beginning of the ’90s, after selling millions of records for Warner Bros’ Atlantic Records, Moore thought about packing the Music Biz in.

But instead of finding “a comfortable nest egg,” he found, “barely a goose egg,” writes Edna Gundersen in USA TODAY here.

Now he’s one of several music industry veterans suing Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI for failure to make or report royalties to their retirement funds, says Gundersen.

The Big Five, “failed to maintain contact with … performers and had stopped making required payments,” a two-year investigation by New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office recently found.

Now they’ve been ordered to return $50 million to musicians they’ve had under contract.

“Sam was told his pension would be $63.67 a month,” the USA TODAY story quotes Joyce Moore, Sam Moore’s wife and manager, as saying.

“It should have been $8,000. It’s wrong, and it all ties back to royalties. From 1965 to 1992, Atlantic contributed not one penny to Sam’s pension. The whole problem is accounting and accountability. We know the labels don’t know how to count except when it comes to their own money.”

Moore and other R&B vets are suing for “failing to accurately report royalties or make required contributions to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ Health and Retirement Funds,”‘ says the story.

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