For years, Bradley Johnson hired young, ambitious women, eager to find their footing in Nashville's music industry.
Many believed working for his company, PEG Music, a business that claims to help independent artists "elevate their careers," could help them launch their own.
One of those women was Hannah Loomis.
After graduating from Belmont University in 2023 with a degree in music business, Loomis began working part-time in marketing for Johnson. In 2024, Loomis said Johnson approached her with what sounded like a compelling investment opportunity.
According to Loomis, Johnson said he was working with Warner Bros. Discovery on a documentary project and needed to raise capital after another investor pulled out. In exchange for an $8,000 investment,
Loomis said, she was promised full repayment of the original sum, plus a 50% return after 90 days.
"Between Brad's excitement and his confidence, and the fact that I kind of viewed him as a mentor, I decided to go ahead and sign the contract," she said.
Despite the promises, Loomis said she did not receive her money back.
She sued Johnson in 2025, alleging breach of contract. The court ruled in her favor, directing Johnson to pay her $12,000.
A year later, Loomis said she still has not been repaid in full.
"Many women have reached out to me since this happened," she said.
The Tennessean interviewed 12 former employees and investors who said they were left with unpaid wages, unrecovered investments or delayed payments from Johnson and his businesses. Eight of the women interviewed have Nashville ties and collectively estimate they are owed more than $175,000.
Court records show four former associates have sued Johnson for breach of contract and won, resulting in judgments ordering Johnson or his companies to repay them. At least two additional lawsuits remain pending, one alleging breach of contract and unpaid wages and another alleging fraud.
Several people who have won in court say they have recovered little or none of the money awarded to them.
These former associates described a pattern: Johnson built personal relationships, cultivated trust and pitched opportunities connected to his music and media ventures before payments stopped, repayment deadlines passed, and getting in touch with him became difficult.
In a two-hour interview with The Tennessean, Johnson said he didn't mislead employees or investors.
He described PEG Music and related ventures as legitimate startup businesses that ran out of funding before generating revenue.
"I'm devastated that I put them through what they had to go through," Johnson said.
'We won, and I was not able to collect a dime'
In 2020, before PEG Music began operations in Nashville, Johnson was a former businessman working in New York as a career coach.
Johnson's LinkedIn profile states that he graduated from Yale University in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in economics. A representative from Yale told The Tennessean that someone with his name attended the school, but did not receive a degree. Johnson said during the interview that he did graduate from Yale, despite the university's statement, but he doesn't have a copy of his diploma.
Regardless, Johnson's impressive resume helped attract coaching clients like Kenneth Lang, a senior program manager in New York.
"He was phenomenal," said Lang, who came to view Johnson as a friend. "I learned so much from him."
Johnson approached Lang with an opportunity to invest in his new film venture, PEG Films, which was working on a documentary project about the pandemic.
Lang said Johnson sent him a pilot episode and described plans to pitch the project to major streaming platforms. According to Lang, Johnson said investors would receive their money back with interest, or even larger returns if it landed a network deal.
"He sent me a contract," Lang said. "It sounded like a no-lose deal." In 2021, Lang invested approximately $75,000 in multiple installments. That same year, there was a film screening for the project's pilot in Nashville.
Over time, Lang said Johnson told him the project had encountered delays involving HBO Max. An HBO documentary films spokesperson told The Tennessean the company had not entered into an agreement or business arrangement with PEG Films.
A year earlier, one of Johnson's first employees, a Florida-based actress who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing privacy concerns, sued PEG Films in 2023 for more than $12,000 in unpaid wages and won.
"I remember this time was so traumatic," she said. "I couldn’t buy groceries. I was living paycheck-to-paycheck."
After years without repayment, Lang, the New York investor, also sought legal action.
Court records show Lang sued Johnson in 2024 and obtained a judgment in 2026, ordering Johnson to pay Lang more than $106,000.
"We won, and I was not able to collect a dime," Lang said.
Meanwhile, Johnson was building a new venture in Nashville.
The rise of PEG Music
Johnson created PEG Music in 2022, according to the company's website, later moving to Nashville.
In an interview, Johnson said he had multiple ideas to bolster the careers of independent artists in Nashville — he wanted to help artists sell music through NFTs, crypto collectibles, take them on tour, produce a global music festival and create a ranking system designed to identify up-and-coming talent.
Johnson said he invested more than $1 million of his own funds into these ventures, hiring many employees.
Sophie Johnson, a graphic designer (no relation), said she prepared pitch decks for the company's projects. Bonnie Mason, who worked as Johnson's HR manager, said employees regularly attended writer's rounds and recruited artists. Other employees said they planned events or produced social media content.
"I was excited about what we were doing," said Mason. "I believed in it. I believed in him."
“I really thought that I knew Brad as almost a father figure," said Sophie Johnson.
"It seemed super legit," said former employee Natalie Scherr, an artist relations coordinator. Still, many employees felt something was off.
"He would always be drinking whenever we went to writer's rounds, and was encouraging other people to drink," Scherr said. "I didn't think it was professional and I was a little uncomfortable."
Several former associates told The Tennessean they felt pressure to drink at work events.
Johnson said that PEG Music did not have any expectation that employees would consume alcohol, adding many company activities took place in Nashville's live-music venues where alcohol was readily available.
"He was just a very difficult person," said Sophie Johnson. "He was disrespectful and didn't care about other people's time."
By late 2025, a number of PEG Music employees said payroll problems became widespread.
'If the money's gone, it's gone.'
Workers described various explanations from Johnson, including delayed investor funds and banking issues.
Scherr said employees compared notes when payments failed to arrive. "At some point, you can only believe so much of the bulls**t," she said.
Bradley Johnson acknowledged that some former employees remain unpaid, adding that PEG Music experienced periods of both stronger funding and severe cash-flow constraints over its years in operation.
"I had commitments from investors, and I was 99% sure of them. And when they didn't happen, I had no backup plan," Johnson said. "I have no personal assets left."
For some former employees, that explanation was difficult to reconcile with the image Johnson projected while building his businesses. Employees and investors across Johnson’s ventures recalled elaborate events and company dinners, social media posts featuring luxury vehicles and business trips.
Johnson said 100% of investor funds went toward legitimate business operations.
Sophie Johnson said employees then discovered previous lawsuits involving Bradley Johnson, like Loomis' case, and began contacting former associates, learning that some investors were struggling to recover funds.
Julie Kent, a software engineer and single mother with a passion for startups, said Johnson told her she could become the chief technology officer of PEG Music if she invested. She contributed $50,000, her first major startup investment.
Investing in music ventures is not uncommon.
Investors have backed record labels, artist-management companies and music startups. One famous example is Scott Swift's investment in Big Machine Records when his daughter, Taylor Swift, was signed.
Kent hoped owning part of a music company would help propel her career. Instead, she said, she lost both money and trust.
Another investor, a Nashville-based woman who spoke on condition of anonymity due to ongoing litigation, said she spent months helping Johnson build financial projections before investing approximately $65,000.
She said Johnson had frequently discussed other investor commitments with her.
Former employee Laura Walsh also invested in Johnson's ventures. She sued him in 2024, obtaining a judgment in 2025 for approximately $7,500.
"I won the hearing," she said, "but because it's a small claims court, you are responsible yourself for collecting the funds, and he claims to have no funds."
Those who have won in court described similar frustrations.
Heather Wright, Nashville Chair of Buchalter’s Litigation Practice Group, said obtaining a judgment is often only the first step.
"Most of the time, recovering on a judgment can be virtually impossible unless they have assets," Wright said. "If the money's gone, it's gone."
Johnson disputed characterizations that investors were promised guaranteed returns, saying they understood the inherent risks.
"When you invest $50,000 into a business, you don't invest that with the guarantee you're going to get that back," Johnson said. "That's risk."
PEG Music unravels
Over several years, Johnson began a series of ambitious projects.
The pilot episode of his docuseries was completed, but the full series never materialized. PEG Music's NFT initiative ended when crypto prices plummeted. Plans for a global music festival never launched. A proposed touring program did not move forward.
Former associates see this as more than a pattern of plans falling through.
When the New York-based investor Lang learned about allegations made by Nashville women, it changed his opinion on what happened in his own case.
"I always thought he was a good job coach and he just got in over his head. Now I'm like ... wait a minute, he is a con man," Lang said.
"I feel like a complete sucker."
Brad Johnson's side of the story: 'I'm not hiding'
For his part, Johnson rejected suggestions that PEG Music existed only on paper, calling it "a real operating business built around a real mission."
He also pushed back on suggestions that he financially targeted young women, calling those allegations "lies" spread by "disgruntled employees."
"But who's going to believe me when this particular lady has 8,000 views on her video talking about how horrible a boss I was?" he said. "I fired her because she wasn't good at what she did."
Johnson does not dispute the judgments against him.
"I actively chose not to fight those lawsuits because I accept full personal responsibility for those loans," he said.
At the same time, Johnson said "a clear legal distinction exists" between former employees with unpaid wages, financiers who loaned him money personally and investors in the business.
PEG Music has paused operations, yet Johnson said he has no plans to file for bankruptcy.
A music-industry ranking system, which aims to measure the potential of rising artists, is still under development, and Johnson hopes funding opportunities could eventually allow the company to resume operations. But, if PEG Music fails, Johnson said his investors will not recoup a dime.
As for former employees and investors who say communication has become difficult, Johnson said he is "willing to sit down with anyone."
"I'm not hiding," he added. "My employees were like family."
How Nashville's music industry can leave women especially vulnerable
There is a larger story embedded in the experiences these women described.
Many of Johnson's employees were in the early stages of their careers, looking for a foothold in Nashville's music industry.
A 2025 study from USC Annenberg found women held just 13.2% of top executive positions across major and independent music companies. This made any proposal with a fast-track to an executive role even more tempting.
Looking back, many of the women interviewed said the financial losses were only part of the damage.
"This definitely changed my perspective of the world around me,” said Loomis.
It's also why some of the alleged victims continue to seek retribution in court.
"I just want him to not be able to do this again," said Scherr, who is fighting in court for $2,500 in unpaid wages. She isn't going to give up, she said.
Before she walked out of the courtroom in late July, Judge John Aaron Holt offered a brief observation.
There are good companies and bad companies in Nashville's music business, he said.
"It's Music City," Holt said. "I don't know what to tell ya."
Contributing: Kirsten Fiscus, Evan Mealins
Audrey Gibbs is a music reporter at The Tennessean. You can reach her at agibbs@tennessean.com. Follow her on Instagram at @audreyraegibbs.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Women bet their dreams on a Nashville music company. Their money kept vanishing
