However, in a July 11 email, an unnamed XO Music Festival organizer told KQED, "Our tickets provider will 100% offer full refunds to anyone if the festival is terminated."

[Update, 11:15am: XO Music Festival updated its website stating that the event was canceled due to low ticket sales, "in part due to the fact that there were some negative media reports targeting us, with which we strongly disagree." The statement concluded that tickets will be refunded through the ticketing agent, GrowTix, and that the festival will be rescheduled for a later date.]

Things already looked dire in the weeks leading up to XO Fest: several artists canceled their sets, citing lack of compensation. And as of July 10, three days before the festival, the Contra Costa Event Park remained bare—with no evidence of the three stages with pyrotechnics, a color arena, a foam pit, a bounce house or carnival rides that marketing materials promised.

KQED reached organizers by email on July 11 with a series of questions. In an unsigned emailed response from the festival's official email, an XO Music Festival representative declined to answer whether or not the festival would start on July 13 at noon as planned. The response also did not address whether set-up at the festival site had begun.

KQED first reported on concerns about XO Music Festival in May, after concert industry blog Amplify raised several red flags. The Antioch hip-hop festival boasted an ambitious array of attractions and VIP experiences, plus a star-studded lineup featuring T.I., Ludacris and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, with Carmen Electra and the Jersey Shore cast as hosts.

After a series of public records requests, Amplify's David Brooks discovered that XO Fest's organizer Sami Habib, a.k.a. Habibullah Said Qadir, is one of two brothers currently out on bail in a Fremont rental scam case, in which the brothers allegedly moved into a series of high-end properties using falsified documents and then failed to pay rent.

There were other strange details: XO Music Festival's website relied on clip art and photos from other festivals around the world, and boasted sponsors like BART and Thizzler, who later confirmed that they were never affiliated with the fest (XO Fest since removed the logos from their website). The festival also changed its name from XOXO Music Festival after a trademark dispute with an event in Portland of the same name.

After KQED's May 18 story ran, our office received a phone call on behalf of XO Fest from a man who refused to disclose his identity. He suggested that KQED remove the article, but could not identify any details in the story as factually incorrect.

A call from this reporter back to the phone number given went unreturned, as did a follow-up email. On July 10, KQED received an email from another unnamed XO Fest rep: "Honestly we are trying to create something amazing here, an outlet for up and coming artists," they wrote. "This is not about money! You know that festivals like ours lose the first few years. If it was about money we would be doing something else."

In subsequent correspondence, XO Fest organizers and representatives continued to decline to identify themselves.

Just days before XO Fest's July 13 scheduled kickoff, several artists dropped out of the event, citing bad business practices on the part of the organizers.

"This was not of my choosing to not perform, but it appears that this company lead many of the artists to believe this was a legit concert, signed contracts, used our images and names (which btw was against contract stipulations) to sell tickets, but never confirmed with financial contractural agreements," wrote artist Trinere in a Facebook post, apologizing to her fans for pulling out of the fest.