cSinger-songwriter Cas Haley was a standout on Season 2 of America’s Got Talent, making it all the way to second place (behind ventriloquist Terry Fator) with his covers of “Walking on the Moon” by the Police and Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine.” He’s since released four independent albums, but if you’re wondering why he didn’t go the major label route, it’s because he literally went into hiding from the series’ Simon Cowell-affiliated record company, Syco.

“What I did was, I ignored them for about six months. They wanted an album out by Christmas,” Haley revealed this week during a recent South by Southwest festival panel, “Now What? Life After Reality Singing Competitions,” that also included The VoiceSeason 1 semifinalist Nakia and American Idol Season 6 runner-up Blake Lewis. “A day after the show was over, I was supposed to be going to meetings; they were introducing me to people that were going to be songwriters on my album. That was a wake-up call, right there. I was like, ‘I am a songwriter. I really care about me being authentic with my art. This is not the place for me.’

“The second day after the show was over, instead of going to the meeting, I flew home and I changed my phone number. True story.”

Haley explained that he’d “grown fearful and untrustworthy” during his time on AGT, which he’d only reluctantly tried out for after a well-meaning friend set up a private audition. (“I really was one of the people that really didn’t like reality TV before I auditioned. My wife loved it, and I was always sort of hating on it.”) He soon had a “rude awakening” when he “realized that it was about good TV and not about maybe doing the right thing,” after he claims producers exploited a young contestant.

“She was probably 8 years old,” Haley recalled. “The producers in the holding room tell all of us, ‘Jasmine made it through.’ Jasmine walks through the doors, everybody claps: ‘Congratulations!’ And Jasmine didn’t make it through. They get the reaction of this 8-year-old girl sort of in that moment of everybody congratulating her, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know about this.’ … Maybe they made a mistake, but to me it seemed like it was set up.”

Haley also felt uneasy about the show “pushing people through that obviously were a little unstable,” like “Boy Shakira,” an aspiring female impersonator who was presented as a joke. “I think they’re playing with fire, and that sort of weirded me out. That’s when I sort of stopped — like, ‘I don’t trust these people.’”

And so, when Haley was informed that the show’s powers-that-be wanted to rush out an album with him, he panicked. “What that meant was they were going to exercise all their options,” Haley explained. “Their options is the thing. They have you sign into all these different options, which in total makes a 360 deal where they have your performances capped, they have your merchandising, they have every aspect of revenue from your career they’re involved in.”

Haley subsequently bolted. But he couldn’t hide forever. Months later, in Austin, Texas,America’s Got Talent caught up with him.

“Man, I was sort of freaked out, because they found me!” Haley chuckled. “In this city, at a gig, they just showed up — this guy named Paul who was going to be my manager. … They’re introducing me to my ‘manager,’ they’re introducing me to my songwriters, they find me after I just cut off communication, and I had to basically tell them to leave, because I was freaked out. It’s like someone who didn’t realize that they were so into ma and pa business just sold it, and these other people are coming in and taking control.”

Haley laughingly admitted that he “was in breach of everything” legally, but he didn’t know what he was getting into in the first place. “They gave us the contract [when the season started] and they basically said, ‘We need this back tomorrow,’” he said. “I didn’t even have a lawyer review anything. I just signed it all. The way that it was presented to me, it was pretty much in stone and that they probably wouldn’t be changing anything.”