Legal News
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A Los Angeles federal judge says that a woman accusing Diplo of sharing “revenge porn” must reveal her identity if she wants to proceed with her civil lawsuit against the star.
The case — which claims the DJ (Thomas Wesley Pentz) filmed sexual encounters and shared them on Snapchat — was filed by an unnamed “Jane Doe.” But in a ruling Tuesday (Dec. 31), Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani said the accuser had failed to legally show that she needs to remain anonymous.
The use of Doe pseudonyms has become common in sexual abuse complaints, and attorneys for Diplo’s accuser had argued that she would face retaliation if her name is revealed. But Judge Almadani said such treatment is reserved only for clear-cut, high-risk situations — and that the case against Diplo doesn’t qualify under that standard.
“The court appreciates that plaintiff’s allegations in her complaint are sensitive and of a highly personal nature, and that she may face some public scrutiny,” the judge wrote. “However, absent a demonstrated need for anonymity, there is a prevailing public interest in open judicial proceedings.”
The ruling is a win for Diplo, who has strongly denied the lawsuit’s allegations and argued that the plaintiff must reveal her name. In court filings, his lawyers had argued that he “cannot adequately confront his accuser without knowing her identity.”
In a complaint filed in June, Diplo’s accuser alleged she’d had a consensual sexual relationship with the DJ from 2016 to 2023, and that she occasionally “gave defendant Diplo permission to record them having sex.” But she said she later learned that he had sometimes secretly recorded them and then shared footage on the internet “without plaintiff’s knowledge or consent.”
“Plaintiff brings this action to recover for the emotional and physical injuries she endured because of Diplo’s actions and to make sure no one else is forced to suffer the privacy invasions and physical and mental trauma she felt and continues to feel to this day,” Doe’s attorneys wrote.
The lawsuit accused Diplo of violating the federal Violence Against Women Act, which was amended in 2022 to ban the sharing of “intimate” images without the consent of those depicted in them. The case also cited an earlier revenge porn law enacted by the state of California.
In seeking to use the “Jane Doe” pseudonym, attorneys for Diplo’s accuser argued that she would face “personal embarrassment and social stigmatization” if her name were revealed. They warned that the DJ has a “large following,” and that when another woman spoke out about alleged revenge porn, she had faced “ridicule and threats to bodily harm.”
But in Tuesday’s decision, Judge Almadani said Doe had failed to supply hard evidence to support those claims — and that barring such proof, people using the American legal system must use their real names. The judge cited an earlier ruling that “the people have a right to know who is using their courts.”
“Those using the courts must be prepared to accept the public scrutiny that is an inherent part of public trials,” the judge wrote, quoting from another old ruling. “Plaintiff has not sufficiently demonstrated that this case warrants an exception.”
Though Almadani wasn’t swayed by fears of potential foul play, she pointedly warned both sides about avoiding any such behavior as the case moves forward — saying that she would “not tolerate any disrespect toward either party.”
“This case, like all other cases, shall be handled with professionalism and civility by all sides,” the judge wrote. “Any actual threats of retaliation or harassment shall be brought to the Court’s attention immediately.”
Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Friday (Jan. 3).
Yolanda Saldívar, the obsessed fan who was sent to prison for the murder of Tejano superstar Selena in 1995, has started the parole review process, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Saldívar, who is now 64, was found guilty of murdering Selena on Oct. 23, 1995, and later sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 30 years. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s website lists her parole review date as March 30, 2025, and notes that the parole review process begins roughly six month before an inmate’s parole eligibility date for a first review, with an institutional parole officer responsible for reviewing the inmate’s file “for all appropriate documents, including letters of support and protest.” After reviewing the file and interviewing the inmate, the officer prepares a case summary for a “Board voting panel,” which “normally will vote on the case just prior to the parole eligibility date.”
A former nurse who insinuated herself into Selena’s orbit during the singer’s rise to fame, Saldívar founded the star’s official fan club and was later named manager of her Selena Etc. clothing boutiques. However, the relationship soured after Selena and her family accused Saldívar of embezzling money from Selena’s businesses and fired her from her role.
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Things came to a tragic end on March 31, 1995, during a meeting between Selena and Saldívar at a Days Inn in Corpus Christi, Tex., when Saldívar shot Selena in the shoulder with a .38-caliber revolver as Selena, who had come to retrieve financial records, attempted to flee. The singer succumbed to her injuries that afternoon, just two weeks shy of her 24th birthday. Saldívar surrendered after a more than nine-hour standoff with police. She has long maintained that the shooting was an accident.
Selena’s death was followed by a massive outpouring of public grief, with mourners numbering in the tens of thousands attending a viewing of the singer’s open casket ahead of her funeral. She has since been recognized as one of the most influential Latin artists in history, helping usher in the mainstream popularity of Tejano music. Following her death, five of her singles hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Latin Tracks chart, and her final studio album, Dreaming of You, reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with its title track also rising to No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100. Her life has been dramatized in both a hit 1997 feature film starring Jennifer Lopez and Netflix’s Selena: The Series starring Christian Serratos as the late singer.
Lil Durk’s trial on federal murder-for-hire charges will be pushed back until October after both his lawyers and federal prosecutors agreed to a months-long delay.
The case against Durk — over an alleged plot to kill rival rapper Quando Rondo in a 2022 Los Angeles shooting that left another man dead — had been scheduled to go to trial next week because federal “speedy trial” rules require such cases to be quickly heard by a jury.
But in a motion on Tuesday (Dec. 31), both sides agreed to a request from Lil Durk (real name Durk Devontay Banks) and his co-defendants to postpone the courtroom showdown until Oct. 14 to give them more time to prepare for the trial — a request that prosecutors did not oppose.
“Due to the nature of the prosecution and the number of defendants, including the charges in the indictment and the voluminous discovery that will be produced to defendants, this case is so unusual and so complex that it is unreasonable to expect adequate preparation for pretrial proceedings or for the trial itself within the Speedy Trial Act time limits,” the parties told the judge in the new filing.
Durk was arrested in October on conspiracy, murder-for-hire and firearms charges for allegedly orchestrating the 2022 attack at a Los Angeles gas station, which left Rondo (Tyquian Bowman) unscathed but saw his friend Lul Pab (Saviay’a Robinson) killed in the crossfire. Durk allegedly ordered the shooting in retaliation for the 2020 killing of rapper King Von (Dayvon Bennett), a close friend and frequent collaborator.
In charging documents, prosecutors claim that Durk’s “Only The Family” (“OTF”) crew was not merely a well-publicized group of Chicago rappers, but a “hybrid organization” that also functioned as a criminal gang to carry out violent acts “at the direction” of Durk, including the Rondo attack.
“Banks put a monetary bounty out for an individual with whom Banks was feuding named T.B.,” prosecutors wrote in the charges last month, referring to Rondo by his initials. “Banks ordered T.B.’s murder and the hitmen used Banks and OTF-related finances to carry out the murder.”
Among other evidence, prosecutors say the assailants booked flights to Los Angeles using a credit card connected to Durk. The feds say the card was issued under a bank account that listed Durk’s one-time manager as an owner, and that another credit card was issued under the same account to Durk’s father. Charging documents also cite a text allegedly sent by Durk to another co-conspirator in the lead-up to the shooting: “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.”
Durk has denied the allegations and pleaded not guilty to the charges. In addition to the star himself, prosecutors have also charged those who they say actually carried out the attack, including alleged OTF members Kavon London Grant, Deandre Dontrell Wilson and Asa Houston, as well as Keith Jones and David Brian Lindsey, two other alleged Chicago gang members.
With the rapper seeking release on pre-trial bond, prosecutors unsealed new documents in December linking him to another shooting that left Stephon Mack, an alleged Chicago gang leader, dead in 2022. The feds argued that the earlier slaying had also been an act of revenge by Durk, ordered after the star’s brother was killed by a member of Mack’s gang.
Following those revelations, a federal magistrate judge denied Durk’s motion to be released on bond at a December hearing, leaving him in jail until his eventual trial. He’s currently being housed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, a federal prison frequently used to house defendants before and during trial.
In some cases, denial of bond might prompt defense attorneys to force prosecutors to stick to the speedy trial schedule and quickly present the case to a jury. But in Tuesday’s order, attorneys for Durk and the other defendants said the complexity of the Rondo shooting case would require more time to adequately prepare a defense — and that “the government does not object to the continuance.”
“Defense counsel represent that failure to grant the continuance would deny them reasonable time necessary for effective preparation,” the judge wrote, adding that defense lawyers needed plenty of time to “conduct and complete an independent investigation of the case” and “complete additional legal research” ahead of trial.
Jingle Punks and Audio Up Media founder Jared Gutstadt has been accused of sexual assault in a new lawsuit filed by singer-songwriter and actor Mary Koons (known professionally as Scarlett Burke), who alleges that the influential executive “trapped” her “in a cycle of manipulation, abuse and exploitation” for years.
Filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday (Dec. 31), the complaint alleges that Gutstadt “manipulated” Koons “into a sexual relationship under the guise of advancing her career”; repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted her; “isolated” her from professional opportunities “unless she complied with his sexual and logistical demands”; and “engaged in stalking, harassment, intimidation and retaliation” when she tried to escape his control — in the process “causing her significant and irreparable financial and professional harm.”
Audio Up and Anthem Entertainment — the former parent company of creative music agency Jingle Punks, which Gutstadt founded in 2008 — are also named as defendants in the lawsuit for allegedly facilitating Guststadt’s grip over Koons “by exerting substantial financial control and decision-making power over [her] professional opportunities and working conditions, particularly through her employment and contractual relationships with Jingle Punks.”
The allegations were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Gutstadt is best known for founding Jingle Punks and Audio Up, a podcast network he launched in 2020. Anthem (then known as ole Music Publishing) acquired Jingle Punks in 2015, ultimately leading to Gutstadt’s exit four years later. In July, Anthem and Gutstadt struck a joint venture enabling Audio Up to develop scripted podcasts from some of the publishing and intellectual property assets he created at Jingle Punks. In October, Jingle Punks was acquired by music licensing company Slipstream along with Anthem’s other production music businesses. (Slipstream is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.)
According to the complaint — filed by L.A.-based attorney Samuel Brown at Hennig Kramer along with Parisis Filippatos, Tanvir Rahman and Gabrielle Rosen Harvey at New York firm Filippatos — Koons met Gutstadt in 2017, when she was 27 and he was 39. Over the next several years, she alleges she endured “psychological manipulation, physical violence and sexual abuse, leading to severe emotional and psychological trauma,” according to the complaint. “The relentless pattern of abuse culminated in an environment where Ms. Koons felt she had no choice but to comply with Mr. Gutstadt’s sexual demands, to avoid the horrifying consequences of refusing him.”
In the lawsuit, Koons claims she met Gutstadt in May 2017 at the Peppermint Club in West Hollywood, where Gustadt’s band, The Jingle Punks Hipster Orchestra, had a residency. That night, she says, Gutstadt “fixated” on her immediately and later had his assistant contact Koons’ then-manager to arrange a meeting. Over the next several weeks, Koons claims Gutstadt “launched a calculated campaign to groom” her, “bombarding her with messages about prestigious career opportunities designed to captivate and overwhelm her,” inviting her to dinners with high-profile music and TV executives, and bringing her along on trips to Nashville and Lake Tahoe “under the guise of collaborating on music projects” for Jingle Punks’ then-parent company ole Music (later Anthem).
Koons says that within a week of meeting Gutstadt, he requested that she record “Let the Dice Roll,” a song he was planning to pitch as the theme for the Netflix series Girls Incarcerated. “This marked the start of her employment with Jingle Punks and her entrapment in his manipulative control,” according to the suit. After Netflix acquired the song, Koons claims Gutstadt paid her only $500 (“a glaring underpayment that disregarded the value of her work and contribution”) and kept the rights to the song for himself.
According to the lawsuit, the first flash of Koons’ alleged abuse occurred “in or around” June 2017 after Gutstadt invited Koons to a dinner that had “several prominent music executives” in attendance. After driving her back to her Studio City apartment, Koons says Gustadt “began incessantly pressuring” her to kiss him, and, when she obliged by agreeing to kiss him on the cheek, he “turned his head at the last moment, tricking her into kissing him on the lips.”
The following month, Koons said that Gutstadt invited her to join him in Nashville for a week of writing sessions with him and his team, during which she says she was put up in a seedy “motel along the interstate,” half an hour’s drive from the Thompson Hotel where Gutstadt was staying. Claiming she felt unsafe, she says she asked Gutstadt to move her to a different hotel and that, instead of providing her with her own room, he manipulated her into staying in his. Koons claims the first sexual assault happened that night, when she alleges Gutstadt “forcibly grabbed her hand and put it on his penis” and “ignored her pleas for him to stop.”
Over the next several months, Koons says Gustadt “overwhelmed” her with “lavish gifts and gestures,” including freelance work opportunities, and “deliberately isolated” her from supportive people in her life, including her manager, “who, like many others, recognized that something was wrong and tried to separate” her from Gutstadt.
In a pattern of alleged abusive behavior that Koons says occurred over the next seven and a half years, she says Gutstadt’s “manipulative tactics paved the way for his coercive sexual relationship” with her. “In or around” August 2017, she says Koons invited her to a Jingle Punks company retreat in Lake Tahoe, only to again deceive her into sharing a hotel room with him and failing to include her in any of the “team building activities.” It was around this time that Koons says she became aware of a “misogynistic” culture at Jingle Punks and Anthem, including an alleged incident at the Tahoe retreat in which a male Jingle Punks music supervisor attempted to assault a female Jingle Punks composer in her hotel room. Koons claims that despite the company being aware of the alleged incident, “no action was taken” to address it.
Koons says she was subsequently “lured into an intermittent extramarital affair” with Gutstadt, who she says “would also constantly resort to coercion and manipulation to convince Ms. Koons she had to stay with him in order to advance her career” — all while being denied the opportunity to “reap the benefits of her work” as a songwriter for the company and being cut off from outside work opportunities. In one account, she says that when the Deutsch advertising agency reached out to her with an offer of work, Gutstadt “became enraged” and verbally abused her before compelling her to tell the Deutsch executive that any future offers needed to be run through Gutstadt and Jingle Punks.
According to the lawsuit, Koons says that Gutstadt, in a bid at “entrenching his dominance over her,” eventually left her completely financially dependent on him, after which she says “the abuse escalated significantly.” Each time she says she tried to release his grip on her, he would allegedly lure her back with lucrative work opportunities on high-profile projects, including paid writing sessions for the movie Trolls and an opportunity to write for country star Chris Stapleton.
In the fall of 2018, Koons says that after taking her to an Emmy Awards party, Gutstadt effectively forced her to have sex with him at his office after making her “feel indebted to him” for the invite. “This was not consensual sex,” the lawsuit reads. That same October, she says Gutstadt manipulated her into signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) “not tied to any specific project” with Gutstadt or his company. After signing it, she says Gustadt “warned her that if she ever spoke out, no one would believe her, and that breaching the NDA would not only destroy her career but allow him to ruin her entirely.” She claims that as a party to the NDA, ole Music (now Anthem) “exerted additional control over Ms. Koons by restricting her ability to speak out” about Gutstadt’s alleged abuse.
Koons claims the abuse further escalated after she signed the NDA and that she was forced to take jobs with Gustadt, Jingle Punks, ole Music and Audio Up, including through signing multiple agreements with the companies that served “to strip her of her creative ownership” and deny her adequate financial compensation. According to the lawsuit, one of these alleged agreements — a development deal with Jingle Punks and ole Music for Make It Up As We Go, a podcast series based around Koons’ original music — saw Koons effectively “signing away her creative rights” to the project and being paid just $10,000, described as “a paltry and insulting amount that grossly undervalued her contributions and highlighted the agreement’s exploitative nature.”
The lawsuit includes multiple allegations of physical abuse. In one April 2019 incident described in the complaint, Koons claims that after allegedly protesting when Gutstadt “took most of the money” she earned from participating in a two-day Deutsch songwriting session, he “became violent” and began hitting both her and her dog. In another alleged incident in October 2019, Koons claims that Gustadt “violently tackled her to the ground” after she attempted to read text messages between him and his wife.
In another account of alleged abuse, Koons claims that while recording two songs with him and another songwriter at Audio Up’s Audio Chateau in L.A. in January 2022, she awoke in the middle of the night to find Gutstadt “raping her in her sleep.” She claims Gutstadt raped her again in September 2023 — while they were staying at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, Calif., during an Audio Up writing retreat — after Gutstadt became enraged when Koons “refused his sexual advances.”
Throughout Koons’ alleged relationship with Gutstadt, she says Anthem/ole Music “enabled” a culture of “harassment and coercion,” thereby “solidifying its complicity in the ongoing mistreatment” of Koons as well as multiple other female employees by Jingle Punks staffers.
“Mr. Gutstadt’s deliberate and vindictive behavior has marginalized Ms. Koons, stunting her professional growth and obstructing her visibility within the industry,” the complaint reads, adding that she “has suffered and continues to suffer from profound emotional distress,” including post-traumatic stress disorder.
Koons is seeking compensatory damages, lost wages and earnings, a money judgment for “mental pain and anguish and severe emotional distress,” and punitive and exemplary damages, among other relief.
Representatives for Gutstadt, Anthem and Audio Up had not responded to Billboard‘s request for comment at press time.
Five individuals have been charged in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who died Oct. 16 after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, according to a public notice by Argentina‘s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office.
Those charged include hotel manager Gilda Martin, receptionist Esteban Grassi, and Payne’s friend Roger Nores, all facing manslaughter charges. Additionally, hotel employee Ezequiel Pereyra and waiter Braian Paiz have been charged with supplying drugs. In Argentina’s legal system, prosecutors gather evidence for a judge to determine whether to proceed to trial. Judge Laura Bruniard has moved the case to the next stage, a decision the defendants’ lawyers may appeal. If the appeal fails, the case will proceed to trial.
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Court documents identify the suspects only by their initials. Payne’s friend, identified as “RLN,” is accused of manslaughter for allegedly neglecting his duty of care and abandoning Payne despite knowing of his impaired state due to substance abuses. Hotel manager “GAM” is also charged with manslaughter for failing to prevent Payne from being taken to his room under circumstances deemed hazardous. Chief receptionist “ERG” faces similar charges for allegedly instructing others to forcibly take Payne to his room instead of ensuring his safety.
“Payne’s consciousness was altered and there was a balcony in the room,” the judge said. “The proper thing to do was to leave him in a safe place and with company until a doctor arrived. The people responsible at the hotel that day were the manager GAM and the head of reception ERG.”
Judge Bruniard emphasized that while these individuals likely did not intend for Payne to die, their actions or inactions posed significant risks to his life. “They were imprudent in allowing him to be taken to the room and taking him there respectively,” he concluded. “They created a legally disapproved risk and Payne’s death is the concretization of that risk.”
If convicted, the manslaughter charges carry sentences of one to five years in prison, while the drug-supplying charges carry much harsher penalties, ranging from four to 15 years, according to the BBC. The judge ordered Pereyra and Paiz, the two individuals accused of supplying drugs, to remain in custody and appear in court within 24 hours.
Payne’s death was attributed to multiple traumas and hemorrhages resulting from a fall from the third-floor balcony at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel. Toxicology reports revealed the presence of alcohol, cocaine and prescription antidepressants in his system. Before the fatal incident, the head receptionist made two emergency calls — the first call reported a guest “trashing the entire room,” and the second raised concerns that the guest’s life “may be in danger.” Despite these concerns, the receptionist requested only medical services, not police assistance.
Last month, Payne’s funeral was held in Amersham in the UK. It was attended by his former One Direction bandmates — Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik — as well as his girlfriend Kate Cassidy and ex-partner Cheryl Cole, with whom he shares a son.
President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue.
The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk.
“President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice for solicitor general.
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The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table.
He has been holding meetings with foreign leaders and business officials at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida while he assembles his administration, including a meeting last week with TikTok CEO Shou Chew.
Trump has reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined TikTok during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral.
He said earlier this year that he still believed there were national security risks with TikTok, but that he opposed banning it.
The filings Friday come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The law was signed by President Joe Biden in April after it passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge afterwards.
Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.”
In their brief to the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance argued the federal appeals court erred in its ruling and based its decision on “alleged ‘risks’ that China could exercise control” over TikTok’s U.S. platform by pressuring its foreign affiliates.
The Biden administration has argued in court that TikTok poses a national security risk due to its connections to China. Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information.
But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok’s legal filing said, adding that the U.S. fears are predicated on future risks.
In its filing Friday, the Biden administration said because TikTok “is integrated with ByteDance and relies on its propriety engine developed and maintained in China,” its corporate structure carries with it risk.
This story was originally published by The Associated Press.
The woman who accused Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs of drugging and raping her when she was 13 years old can remain anonymous for now, a judge ruled Thursday (Dec. 26), citing the “highly sensitive” nature of her accusations.
According to court documents obtained by Billboard, Judge Annalisa Torres wrote that “the weight of the factors” in the case “tips in favor of allowing Plaintiff to remain anonymous” for now. In justifying the decision, the judge cited the Jane Doe’s assertion that she continues to suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and other health effects due to the alleged rape, as well as a claim by the woman’s attorneys that Combs has threatened other alleged victims who have filed suits against him for speaking out. However, the judge acknowledges that “because the balance of these factors will certainly shift” as the case moves forward, she plans to revisit the question of anonymity at a later date.
Also in Thursday’s ruling, the judge turned down a request by Jay-Z’s legal team to fast-track a hearing on their motion to dismiss the case against him and criticized the rap mogul’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, for his “relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks” against the plaintiff’s attorney, Tony Buzbee, calling them “inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client.” The motion to expedite the hearing was tied to a Dec. 13 NBC News interview in which the Jane Doe admitted to inconsistencies and “mistakes” in her narrative of the alleged assault and was contradicted by her own father.
In the woman’s complaint, filed earlier this month, she accused Combs and Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) of drugging and sexually assaulting her following an MTV Video Music Awards after-party in 2000. The case was an updated version of a previous complaint the woman had filed against Combs alone.
Since the updated case including Carter was filed on Dec. 8, the rap mogul and his attorneys have forcefully denied the allegations, with Carter calling the lawsuit a “blackmail attempt” and characterizing Buzbee as a “fraud” with an aim “to exploit people for personal gain.” Buzbee has filed a host of lawsuits against Combs over the last several months and has said he represents dozens more victims who have yet to file their own complaints.
In a statement sent to Billboard in response to Thursday’s court ruling, Buzbee said that “the coordinated and desperate efforts to attack me as counsel for alleged victims are falling flat.”
An attorney for Carter did not immediately respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
The latest decision in the case comes as part of a mounting legal war between Jay-Z and Buzbee. On Dec. 18, Buzbee filed a lawsuit against Jay-Z’s company, Roc Nation, and its attorneys (including Marcy Croft and law firm Quinn Emanuel) accusing them of “engaging shadowy operatives” to derail his case against the rapper, including by allegedly offering money to one of his former clients (Gerardo Garcia) to convince him to file bogus lawsuits against his firm — an incident Buzbee claims was caught on tape. “Defendants have conspired to obstruct justice by engaging shadowy operatives to illegally seek out more than two dozen current and former clients of The Buzbee Law Firm to convince those clients to bring frivolous cases against [the firm],” Buzbee wrote.
In response, a Roc Nation spokesperson called Buzbee’s lawsuit “nothing but another sham” and “a pathetic attempt to distract and deflect attention,” while Croft reacted by calling the allegations in the lawsuit “false” and “a desperate attempt to distract from his mounting legal woes.”
Buzbee’s Dec. 18 lawsuit is actually the second he’s filed against Carter’s attorneys over the past month. The first, filed earlier in December, accused Quinn Emanuel of retaliatory behavior, including alleged harassment of Buzbee’s colleagues, clients and family. That came in response to a lawsuit Jay-Z secretly filed against Buzbee in November in which the rapper accused the Texas attorney of spearheading an effort to extract settlements from innocent celebrities after threatening to link them to Combs.
Daddy Yankee and his estranged wife Mireddys González reached a partial agreement in their first court hearing on Friday (Dec. 20) over his allegations that she withdrew $100 million in funds from two of his companies without authorization. Following private negotiations, both parties agreed that the artist born Ramón Luis Ayala Rodríguez will regain the […]
A criminal investigation has been launched into suspected fraud at U.K. collecting society PPL after the organization discovered “suspicious activity” on a small number of member accounts.
PPL said one staff member had been dismissed following an internal investigation it carried out over several months earlier this year. The alleged crime is now being investigated by The Metropolitan Police, the CMO said in a short statement.
“We recently became aware of suspicious activity on a small number of member accounts. We immediately conducted an internal investigation, and one employee was dismissed,” said a spokesperson Thursday (Dec.19). The organization said it was “working with the limited number of impacted members to rectify accounts.”
PPL is the second largest of the United Kingdom’s two main collecting societies and licenses recorded music on behalf of labels and artists to U.K. radio and television broadcasters, as well as its use in bars, nightclubs, shops and offices.
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Last year, the 90-year-old organization — which has more than 110 neighboring rights agreements in place with international CMOs, including SoundExchange and the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC) in the United States — collected revenues of £285 million ($356 million), its highest ever annual total. In 2023, PPL paid out £247 million ($309 million) to almost 165,000 performers and recording rights holders.
Record industry sources tell Billboard that the suspected embezzlement is believed to have involved an individual or individuals posing as recording artists who were not registered as PPL members and then fraudulently claiming royalties on their behalf.
Billboard understands that PPL discovered the scheme when the real artists tried to register as members earlier this year. Sources say that the fraudulent royalty claims are believed to have taken place over a number of years, possibly as far back as 2016, with the fraudulent transactions believed to total around £500,000 ($625,000).
PPL said it was unable to comment on the case while a criminal investigation is underway and declined to answer questions on when it discovered the suspicious activity, the timeframe of the alleged offense or whether the impacted member accounts relate to U.K. artist members or overseas partner CMOs. The Metropolitan Police has been approached by Billboard for details.
The criminal investigation into suspected embezzlement at PPL comes as the music business battles on multiple fronts against fraudulent activity and rampant copyright infringement on a global scale.
In November, Universal Music Group (UMG), ABKCO and Concord Music Group filed a lawsuit against Believe and its distribution company TuneCore, accusing them of “massive ongoing infringements” of their sound recordings, seeking $500 million in damages (Believe refutes the claims). One month earlier, TikTok cited issues with “fraud” as its reason for walking away from renewing its license with Merlin, a digital licensing coalition representing thousands of indie labels and distributors.
There have also been several high-profile cases against individuals accused of defrauding streaming platforms, rights holders and collection societies in recent years.
In 2022, two men in Phoenix, Arizona pled guilty to claiming $23 million worth of YouTube royalties from unknowing Latin musicians like Julio Iglesias, Anuel AA, and Daddy Yankee despite having no actual ties to those artists.
More recently, a North Carolina musician was indicted by federal prosecutors in September in the first ever federal streaming fraud case. Prosecutors allege Michael Smith used two distributors to upload “hundreds of thousands” of AI-generated tracks, and then used bots to stream them, earning him more than $10 million since 2017.
To try and curb the rise in fraudulent activity the music business has been ramping up its efforts to stop money being illegally siphoned out of the royalty pool.
Last year, a coalition of digital music companies, including distributors including TuneCore, Distrokid and CD Baby, as well as streaming platforms Spotify and Amazon Music, launched the “Music Fights Fraud” task force. The past 12 months have additionally seen Spotify and Deezer change their royalty systems to include financial penalties for music distributors and labels associated with fraudulent activity.
Spotify is firing back at Drake’s accusations that the streamer helped Universal Music Group artificially boost Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” calling the allegations “false” and blasting the rapper’s legal action as a “subversion of the normal judicial process.”
The new filing is the first response to a petition filed last month in which Drake accused UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song — a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.
In a motion filed Friday in Manhattan court, the streaming giant says it has found zero evidence to support the claims of a bot attack, and flatly denies that it struck any deal with UMG to support Lamar’s song.
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“The predicate of Petitioner’s entire request for discovery from Spotify is false,” the company’s lawyers write. “Spotify and UMG have never had any such arrangement.”
Beyond denying the allegations, the filing repeatedly criticizes Drake for going to court in the first place — calling his claims of a conspiracy “far-fetched” and “speculative,” and questioning why Spotify (a “stranger” to the “long-running fued” between Drake, Kendrick and UMG) is even involved.
Spotify also criticized Drake for the way in which he brought his claims to court — not as a full-fledged lawsuit, but as an unusual “pre-action” petition aimed at demanding information. The company accused Drake of using that “extraordinary” procedure because his allegations are too flimsy to pass muster in an actual lawsuit and would have been quickly dismissed.
“What petitioner is seeking to do here … is to bypass the normal pleading requirements … and obtain by way of pre-action discovery that which it would only be entitled to seek were it to survive a motion to dismiss,” Spotify’s lawyers write. “This subversion of the normal judicial process should be rejected.”
A spokesperson for Drake and his legal team did not immediately return a request for comment on Spotify’s filings.
Drake went to court last month, accusing UMG of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal “RICO” statute often used against organized crime. He accused Spotify of participating in the scheme by charging reduced licensing fees in exchange for recommending the song to users. A day later, he filed a similar action in Texas, suggesting that UMG had legally defamed him by releasing a song that “falsely” accused him of being a “sex offender.”
The legal actions represent a remarkable twist in the high-profile beef between the two stars, which saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier this year. That a rapper would take such a dispute to court seemed almost unthinkable at the time, and Drake has been ridiculed in some corners of the hip-hop world for doing so.
The actions also represent a stunning rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.
UMG has not yet filed a responded to the litigation in court. But in a statement issued at the time, the music giant called Drake’s allegations “offensive and untrue”: “No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
In Friday’s filing, Spotify echoed that criticism — arguing that civil RICO cases are difficult to prove even with ample evidence, and that Drake hardly has any: “The Petition asserts no specific facts of any kind in support of these alleged RICO and deceptive practices violations,” the company wrote. “Instead, it relies exclusively on speculation … or the claims of anonymous individuals on the internet.”
Spotify’s attorneys seemed particularly focused on disputing the idea that swarms of bots had been able to flood the platforms to fraudulently boost Lamar’s track — a hot-button issue in the modern music industry. In an affidavit attached to Friday’s filing, Spotify’s vp of music offered sworn testimony that the company “invests heavily” in efforts to “mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.”
“When we identify attempted stream manipulation, we take action that may include removing streaming numbers, withholding royalties and charging penalty fees,” David Kaefer wrote in the filing. “Confirmed and suspected artificial streams are also removed from our chart calculations. This helps us to protect royalty payouts for honest, hardworking artists.”