The 60 or so remaining employees at Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch have
not been paid for their work since Dec. 23, 2005.

That’s five weeks without pay, without being able to pay for their groceries
or rent or utilities. Things are so bad that ranch manager Joe Marcus, who
testified for Jackson in his child molestation trial, has picked up and
moved to Arizona.

“Every employee of Michael Jackson in California is in trouble,” one of the
staffers told me yesterday.

And yet Jackson does not seem to care one way or another.

Yesterday, he globe-trotted from the Mideast island of Bahrain to Hamburg,
Germany, with his three kids, nannies and security.

Jackson is said to be visiting his friend Anton Schleiter, a 20-year-old,
and Schleiter’s family. Schleiter’s father, Wolfgang, works for Sony BMG
music in Hamburg.

Jackson’s next stops are said to be Munich and then Venice, Italy. How he’s
paying for all this is anyone’s guess, since he’s technically in default on
a huge loan, with threat of foreclosure on all his assets, including the
home in which his parents and siblings live.

The situation at Neverland is said to be dire. Back on Dec. 23, four weeks
had passed before those paychecks were delivered. Now five more weeks have
passed, and the word at the ranch is that there’s no date set for a
resolution.

Marcus, I am told, comes and goes at this point, making infrequent visits.

He hasn’t actually told anyone that he’s moved houses from nearby Santa
Maria, but his staff has noted that Marcus has to be picked up at the
airport in Los Angeles when he comes to work - a sure hint his commute is
longer than usual.

Jackson, meanwhile, has not seen his ranch or its loyal staff since the end
of June 2005. And according to my sources, he hasn’t bothered to pick up a
phone and call anyone who works for him in the United States in at least two
months.

At the same time, a Hamburg newspaper yesterday put a bounty on Jackson’s
head, offering thousands of euros to anyone who could get a picture of the
former King of Pop while he was in town.

Source: FOX News

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