Diplo is denying allegations of sexual misconduct and could possibly face criminal charges by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.
On Wednesday, the artist says the allegations by the alleged victim are part of an “an unceasing campaign of harassment against” the DJ and Producer, whose legal name is Thomas Wesley Pentz.
The unnamed woman has reportedly filed a complaint with the Los Angeles Police Department in October 2020 in which she accuses Diplo of recording and distributing sexually explicit videos without her consent and knowingly infecting her with a sexually transmitted disease- chlamydia.
According to BuzzFeed, the City Attorney’s office has been investigating the incident, and it could result in him being charged for invasion of privacy and intentionally giving someone a sexually transmitted infection.
A statement from Diplo’s Attorney on Wednesday, however, disputes the woman’s allegations and says that the woman is a stalker and she is lying.
“Yet more lies from the same disturbed individual who has been stalking and menacing Wes, his family and his friends for years,” Bryan Freedman, his Attorney, said in a statement.
Freeman also says the woman has been blackmailing his client.
“As is well known, this person tried to extort Wes for millions of dollars and, after he refused to pay her a penny … has been peddling her lies around the country in a desperate attempt to harm Wes and those he loves, but she will not succeed.”
Meanwhile, this is the second complaint of the same nature against the “Electricity” producer. A lawsuit by Marchel Gabrielle Auguste was filed in Los Angeles this year in which the woman claims that the Grammy-winning producer solicited her for sex while she was a minor, that he raped her, and that he knowingly giving her STIs.
The woman said Diplo also posted her nudes revenge porn style after she confronted him about his “abusive behavior,” posting “photos of her vagina and breasts on social media without her consent.”
Auguste’s outlined that Diplo was a powerful figure in the music, and they had a relationship that spanned years that became abusive.
“Ms. Auguste fell into the cycle of Diplo’s abuse,” the suit read. “For years, DIPLO would become upset with Ms. Auguste and put her down if she did not give into his demands. He would gaslight her and make her believe it was her fault that he was upset or that she was not pleasing him”, adding that “he knew she was an impressionable and vulnerable young woman as he had groomed her since she was a teenager. DIPLO knew that Ms. Auguste would do whatever DIPLO asked in order for him to forgive her.”
Meanwhile, Auguste was granted a temporary restraining order against Diplo in November 2020.
He also countersued her and was successful in getting a temporary restraining order against her for stalking, trespassing, and distribution of private materials. His lawsuit labeled her as a “relentless and unstable fan” who “entered Pentz’s life for the purpose of obtaining intimate and personal information about him in order to gain fame and notoriety with her friends, the media, and her social media following.”
His lawsuit further claimed that she was had “burner social media accounts” which she used to send “sexually explicit photographs and videos of Pentz to his friends and family,” and she also posted a nude photo of the musician on her Instagram page as well as spread “false and offensive rumors about him online.”
Meanwhile, the music producer has been named a sexual predator before, with rapper Azealia Banks in 2020 telling the podcast “Cheapys Two Cents” that she “used to have sex with Diplo,” and she was 17 years old at the time. Banks accused Diplo of “preying on young ethnic girls.”
The latest allegations join a fourth woman who, in July 2021, sued the producer, claiming he forced her to perform oral sex on him, and he recorded it without her consent.
Meanwhile, his lawyer says that the lawsuit was “completely outrageous” and “wildly untrue.” He also claimed that the woman was working with Auguste “to wage a smear campaign against his client.”
“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 by Ms. Auguste and her accomplices once and for all,” Freedman is quoted as telling news site TMZ.
Meanwhile, Diplo took to Instagram on Wednesday night to clear his name as he shared a number of screenshots of texts messages between him and the women, which had timestamps from 2019.
According to Diplo, he and the woman did not, in fact, meet in 2014 when she was a minor, as she claims, but that they met much later when she was in her twenties. He added that since then, he only had one consensual sexual encounter with her and a second one that involved her friend as she had pretended to be someone else, and he added her to a guest list as part of a groupie link up while in Las Vegas. Diplo said the friend tried to sue him but later dropped the lawsuit when he provided surveillance footage and videos from his phone about the night of the incident.
He also disputed her claim that he gave her chlamydia and posted a screengrab that showed her admitting that he never gave her an STD where she said, “last thing, you never gave me chlamydia I always get tested, and we didn’t f*** 3 times. So what even.”
In other texts, the woman calls Diplo a pedophile but admitted “he didn’t rape me but he definitely has done many other significantly disgusting and disturbing acts towards me and other girls,” as she asked for others who are victims to reach out to her lawyer so they can jointly sue Diplo.
Diplo also shared screenshots sent by the young woman who he says had over 50 fake accounts, which a private investigator was able to trace to her IP address.
One of the accounts he alleged was used to send racist messages to his third baby mother, who is black, in which the woman using a verbally abusive language called his baby mother “ugly dark skin b****,” and other names.
In some of the text messages, the woman can be seen telling Diplo that he was her first and he took her virginity. He also shared that she had a restraining order taken out by another family in Florida for stalking and harassment.
On the other hand, the singer also called out news site Buzz Feed News for approaching women on Instagram that he follows and comments on their pictures.
One screenshot he shared was from a writer who wanted to speak with a young woman about “Diplo and his relationships with young men,” – a piece which Diplo claimed was all the effort of his stalker named SA who is “collaborating with tabloid journalists to place deliverately misleading and defamatory articles about me based solely on her false claims.”
Diplo also claimed that SA had retained high-powered attorney Lisa Bloom and demanded millions of dollars from him, but he said that he would not give her a penny. Bloom later dropped her and her earlier lawsuit, so the lawsuit filed this week is a new one from new Attorneys.
