Diplo.A woman is suing Diplo over a 2019 encounter during which she alleges he forced her to perform oral sex on him and recorded it without her consent. TMZ reported on July 7 that the woman filed a lawsuit claiming the incident occurred after a 2019 Las Vegas concert, when she and friends went to an after-party hosted by Diplo, a.k.a. Thomas Wesley Pentz. In the case — filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, per “Page Six” — the woman claims she was intoxicated from alcohol and marijuana and thus couldn’t consent to sex with the electronic musician. The woman alleges, according to TMZ, that Diplo invited her to a room, kicked out her friends, and would not let her leave until she performed oral sex, which she claims he filmed. Diplo’s attorney denied the allegations to TMZ. “We have irrefutable evidence that this is a completely meritless claim, and we will be providing it to a court as quickly as we possibly can to put an end to this shakedown,” Bryan Freedman said.
The new claims are similar ones made in another recent lawsuit by Diplo’s ex-girlfriend Shelly Auguste, who filed a sexual-battery lawsuit in June, claiming Diplo coerced her into sex after a 2019 Las Vegas concert. TMZ reported at the time that Auguste alleged that Diplo tried to get her to have a threesome with him and a girl she thought was underage; she also claimed Diplo groomed her over social media when she was 17 and later tried to pressure her into sex as an adult. When they finally had sex, according to Auguste’s suit, Diplo recorded the encounter without her consent. At the time, Freedman told TMZ of Auguste’s lawsuit, “These latest false claims are just part of that ongoing campaign of harassment.”
In Freedman’s statement on the new lawsuit by a second woman, he calls the allegations “completely outrageous, wildly untrue and yet also entirely predictable,” given the similarities to Auguste’s account. Diplo previously sued Auguste in April of this year over what he alleged was harassment; in late 2020, Diplo and Auguste both tried to file for restraining orders against each other, after she first accused Diplo in November 2020 of spreading revenge porn of her.
Update, July 19: The new lawsuit against Diplo has been dropped, Billboard reported on July 16. “In light of the evidence and after consultation with my attorneys, I have decided to withdraw my lawsuit,” the plaintiff told the outlet on July 15, adding, “No payment was offered or requested. I regret filing the lawsuit.” Diplo’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, told Billboard, “As we said when we first learned of this lawsuit, there was absolutely irrefutable evidence that proved that the allegations it contained were false. As soon as we shared that plethora of evidence with the plaintiff’s lawyers, they recognized that they needed to withdraw their suit immediately.”
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