Diplo Accused of Distributing Revenge Porn in New Lawsuit

A federal lawsuit filed in California on Thursday by a woman identified as Jane Doe accuses the DJ and producer Diplo of distributing revenge porn. According to the suit, Doe began communicating with Diplo, born Thomas Wesley Pentz, on Snapchat in April 2016, when she was 21 years old, and they exchanged pornographic images for two months. Doe and Diplo began having sex, according to the suit, and their relationship continued until October 2023, the month before Doe learned that Pentz had been distributing images and videos of their sexual encounters without her knowledge or consent.

Doe’s suit is the second set of revenge porn allegations filed in recent years against Pentz, whose globe-trotting lifestyle has become grist for his prolific social media presence. According to her account, she made Pentz aware that she didn’t want him to record their sexual activities without her consent or distribute images or video to third parties. In November of last year, Doe claims, another woman she didn’t know at the time reached out to her and said she was in possession of images and videos of Pentz and Doe having sex. The woman told Doe that she received the materials from Pentz via Snapchat in October 2018. The suit claims that Diplo continued to distribute Doe’s intimate images and videos up until the present.

On November 7, according to the suit, Doe reported Pentz to the New York Police Department, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. The NYPD didn’t immediately return a request for comment, and it’s unclear whether Pentz has been in New York since November.

Representatives for Pentz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Pentz achieved musical acclaim and prominence during the 2000s, but in more recent years, he has developed a public profile more readily tied to his social ubiquity. A staple of red carpets and A-list sports events, his winking presence tends to land as a Waldo-like trope.

That persona has endured through a separate sexual misconduct case that made headlines for a period beginning in late 2020. In October of that year, a woman named Shelly Auguste alleged that Pentz sexually assaulted her, recorded their sexual activity without consent, and distributed revenge porn. The following year, after Pentz and Auguste sued each other, he denied her claims in a detailed Instagram slideshow, calling her a “stalker” attempting to extort him. In September 2022, an arbitrator awarded Pentz $1.2 million after finding that Auguste’s social media posts violated a mutual restraining order she had signed with Pentz.

Auguste is currently suing Pentz for claims including sexual battery and defamation; a civil trial is scheduled for January 2025. In November, according to a Pitchfork report, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office began reviewing Auguste’s revenge porn allegations after she filed a police report. (The office didn’t return a request for comment on the status of that review.) “For more than three years,” Pentz’s attorney Bryan Freedman told the outlet, “Shelly Auguste has been orchestrating an ongoing smear campaign against Wes—and this is just more of the same.”

Doe is seeking damages from Pentz for violations of revenge porn statutes. “Tragically, this is not the first time the defendant has shamed and violated a woman by disseminating intimate images without her consent,” Helene Weiss, an attorney for Doe, said in a statement. “Diplo’s alleged illicit pattern of behavior illustrates the harm he’s caused Jane Doe, and other young women just like her.”

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