SALISBURY — The weekend of May 24-25 at Rowan County Fairgrounds was meant to be two days of magic, performances, exhibits and activities under the umbrella of the name Neverland North Carolina.

Organized by a group called Become the Change Promotions, it was pulled together by Lonnie Brick and his partner, Angela Reynolds. The two worked for nearly a year to gather performers large and small, from large pirate and knight productions to singers and bands, vendors with unique crafts, food trucks, a petting zoo, wrestlers, even an inflatable kid zone.

It should have been the event of the weekend in the area.

However, it was also graduation weekend for all area high schools, and was not promoted perhaps quite as much as it could have been, according to participants.

During the first day, say a number of those who participated, concern started to grow about getting paid for participation in the event.

Although a number of them were unwilling to put their names on the record, because they are in fact still working to get paid, some did share their experiences.

“Mr. Brick approached me at a festival in Lincolnton, N.C., asking me to be involved in the event,” said Henry Blackwell, the owner of Underground Carolina Wrestling LLC. “In May, after talking on the phone on multiple occasions, we agreed that I wold do the event for $500 per day, as well as providing everyone who participated in the wrestling would get food and drink vouchers. I held up my end of the agreement for Saturday, when I was told to expect 35,000 attendees, only to find out we had 10.

“During the course of the day, it started to feel more and more weird. Mr. Brick was hard to locate, he didn’t want to give us any vouchers and ultimately did not pay me for the day.” Blackwell and his crew ended up packing up and leaving, having received, he says, no vouchers and no payment, and he says Brick still owes him $575 for the day.

But Brick tells a different story. He says Blackwell came to him and asked about participating, for free, to gain exposure for his organization.

Brick acknowledges that many of the checks he wrote have bounced, something more than a dozen participants have shared with the Post and with officials at either the Salisbury Police Department or the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office, which has opened an investigation. Several off-duty deputies from RCSO took private duty jobs at the event and at least two are still owned their fee. Brick says two are square, because one’s check cleared and one got a replacement that went through, but he believes he still owes two of them.

He isn’t sure of their names, because “I was so busy I just filled in the check amounts, signed my name and told them to put their names on the top line.”

Some allege that Brick knew the checks he was writing were no good, implying he never meant to pay anyone, but Brick said nothing could be further from the truth.

He said on Saturday, another organizer was asking about the gate “take” or the money they made during the day from ticket sales, questioning if Brick would have enough to pay everyone. Brick said he pulled out his cell phone to show them, then put his phone on the seat of the golf cart he was in and got distracted by other conversations. During that time, he says he believes “they stole my phone, got my bank account passwords, put my phone back and hacked my account.”

He said he uses Stripe to track the sales and money coming in, and on Sunday morning he found himself locked out of his Stripe and his bank accounts, unable to see what the ticket money income was and unable to even access his own accounts.

By Monday morning, he discovered that $32,000 had been taken out of at least one account, draining it, and that his personal account was also drained.

Since then, he has been working to regain access, which he finally got at the end of last week, around June 5, and he says some of the checks he wrote cleared, many others did not, and he was hit in the interim with multiple overdraft fees. He continues to work to get documentation from the bank on what went through and what did not, so he knows who has been paid and who he needs to get money to.

“But I’m not a wealthy man,” he said. “I don’t get paid every day at my job. I’m determined to pay everyone what they are owed, however long it takes me, but I need them to be patient. People are calling and sending me messages that if I don’t pay them right now, they’re going to have me arrested. If I get arrested and can’t work, I can’t pay them.”

He also said he has been getting death threats, and shared screen shots showing people saying if he “is a dead man walking, and if he shows up in Salisbury, we’ll take care of him.”

“People are saying I deserve to go to jail,” he said. “I can’t make this right from jail. I never set out to scam anyone. I had a vision of something great for Salisbury. I was trying to raise money for Lutheran Services. We had a woman here who has terminal spinal cancer and the only reason she was here was to have her own moment. Instead, people are claiming she’s part of the scam. She was here as a guest, and this is hurting her.”

One person whose check originally bounced was the 12-year-old who won second place in the Battle of the Bands. But his father confirmed that Brick drove to meet him last week and provided a cashier’s check so his son received his award.

Brick said Mason Cole performed Saturday and Sunday, but “he started a lynch mob on his Facebook page. I drove up two and a half hours last week, (the last week of May) and paid him in a cashier’s check, and asked him to take down the comments. He refused.”

Brick added that there have been some who have taken advantage of the situation. Not everyone had written contracts, he said. Some were word of mouth, but he kept a running list of who was to get paid what. And some have now come back demanding much more than the original agreement, and have threatened to have him arrested if he doesn’t pay what they demand.

“I will pay them what we agreed, no more,” he said. “But who would do that? Take advantage of a situation where it’s clear I’m struggling but I’m trying to get everyone their money. And yet I’m the one who is supposed to be scamming people.”

Brick said he “is going to keep going until everyone is paid.” He said Happy Farms cleared a check for $2,700 before the event even began. School bus drivers all got paid. “It is not as if no one got their money. I know not everyone did, but some have been paid in full.”

But he admits the event was not nearly as well attended as he had hoped, or been led to believe.

“When I started talking about the dates, I was assured that it would be perfect, that after Saturday graduations, families would want something to do and would be lining up to come in.”

They did not.

Tony Bilello, who works at School of Rock Greensboro, which was a sponsor, said what he saw and dealt with at the event was “almost comical how horrible things went.”

He said he and his father met Brick a year ago, when he came to them and explained the Neverland idea and asked them to be sponsors and run a Battle of the Bands. Platinum sponsorship was supposed to be $1,500 but he charged them $1,000.

“He would stop by our live events at the school and ask us to promote his event. I was an emcee for our Rocktober Festival where other School of Rock schools come to perform. He held up the flyer to his event and demanded that I make an announcement about it. I didn’t promote it.”

Initially, said Bilello, ticket prices were to be $20 for general admission, but he said Brick bumped them up to $37, with an increase to $89 for VIP tickets, but he was not sure what that meant.

Bilello said he was supposed to be one of the judges at the Friday night Battle of the Bands and the other advertised judges were supposed to be Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and 2 Chainz.

“I contacted the management company of Mr. Chainz and was absolutely flabbergasted to find out that he was going to be in Australia the day of the show and they had no idea what I was talking about,” he said. He added that he and his father cut Brick a check for the sponsorship and he cashed it the same day.

He did say judges for the Battle of the Bands on Saturday was the band Flying High Again. Highlands North Music Center had two bands win the Saturday competition and Belillo said their checks for winning cleared. They did, initially, but were in the end returned. But Brick took care of those funds this past weekend.

“I’m not out to hurt or scam anybody,” Brick insisted. “What do I gain from this? I didn’t gain anything, I’m losing everything.”

And in a new development Monday afternoon, Brick went to talk with investigators at the sheriff’s office. He took all the information he has gathered so far and presented it to Sgt. Holshouser, who is leading the investigation.

Investigators confirmed that Brick did come in to the department of his own volition, and provided information both of actions in his Stripe account and proof that he has made efforts to make things square, and continues to do so.

“He is cooperating with us, and he is working to make things right,”said Chief Deputy Jason Owens. “The investigation is ongoing. He is not in custody, and there is no warrant for his arrest.” He said gathering information takes time and investigators will see where the information leads, but said the fact that Brick is making an effort to get people paid is a good thing.

“I spent a year of my life traveling to festivals, performances, events, to get people to participate in this event,” Brick said. “You don’t do that, invest that kind of time and energy, if you’re just planning to scam everyone. I’m even making a payment arrangement for the 500 stuffed animals I donated to the sheriff’s department for children of violent crimes or assault. And I’m learning that cyberbullying is really a thing.”

Brick said he will never do another event like this again. Between the low attendance, the possibility that his accounts were hacked, and the furor that has built up over the bounced checks and the anger that has been unleashed directly at him, he is finished.

“I had no idea people could be so mean,” he said. “I will make this all right if it takes me forever, but then I’m done.”