Some vendors at Hoopology charity golf event at NCR say they didn’t get paid

Vendors who participated in a charity golf event at NCR Country Club that is the subject of a lawsuit have told the Dayton Daily News that they also weren’t paid by organizers.

NCR Country Club sued former Ohio State University basketball standout and 10-time NBA champion assistant coach Jim Cleamons and others for not paying $75,000 owed for a celebrity golf outing for Cleamons’ now-defunct charity Hoopology.

RELATED: NCR Country Club sues 10-time NBA champ over event payment

Ron Edwards, who helped facilitate the event, had told the Dayton Daily News that everyone but NCR had been paid.

On Wednesday, three vendors who provided items for an auction confirmed they hadn’t been paid thousands of dollars.

Longtime area auctioneer Doug Sorrell said he put Edwards in contact with vendors for the Sunday night event before the August 2018 golf outing.

RELATED: Organizers touted celebrities planning to attend

“I was kind of the conduit between Ron Edwards and these people who are now unpaid,” Sorrell said. “That’s kind of why I’ve stayed after this a little bit because I felt a little bit obligated to them to get paid.”

Tom Brady of Travel Pledge in Cincinnati said he was owed $3,000 as of Wednesday morning. Documentation from Sorrell shows Michael Gordon of Charity Fund Raising Experts in Fort Lee, N.J. is owed $4,450.

RELATED: Edwards said event ‘is going to be a big deal’

Margie Lynch of Tuscany/Antigua vacations of Marietta, Ga. said she hadn’t been paid as of Wednesday morning, but that the Ohio Attorney General’s Office is investigating.

A spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office Charitable Law Section said investigations are confidential unless a lawsuit is filed.

The AG’s office did provide a complaint form from Charity Fund Raising that they weren’t paid for five items that sold — a Larry Bird/Magic Johnson photo, a Steph Curry/Kevin Durant photo, a Muhammad Ali boxing glove and autographed Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots helmets.

RELATED: Lenny Wilkens, Phil Jackson were to headline event

Edwards told this news organization on Wednesday that “two of those three are wrong and the third is being handled” but that he was advised by his attorney against further comment.

Sorrell said other vendors, himself included, were paid for their roles in the charity auction. Sorrell said 250-plus people attended the live auction and that it appeared to be a success.

MORE: Read other stories from Mark Gokavi

“I saw (Edwards) running credit card deals, taking payments,” Sorrell said. “I don’t know who ended up with the money. I saw him collecting for it.”

The Jim Cleamons Celebrity Golf Classic and Charity Event to be “headlined” by Phil Jackson and Lenny Wilkens was billed as a star-studded event with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Kobe Bryant and Jerry West possibly attending, according to court records.

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None of those basketball luminaries attended – the complaint says they were never asked — but 300 people did play golf at the Aug. 20, 2018, event at NCR South, according to a complaint filed in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.

The complaint named as defendants Cleamons, his wife Cheryl, Hoopology, Edwards and his wife Arnika, the University of Dayton women’s basketball director of operations.

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