No stranger to courtrooms or handing out cash, MrBeast isn’t playing games in decrying claims made in a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit filed Wednesday by a former member of his company’s social media team.
The company behind MrBeast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, says the suit is no more than a shakedown.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it,” Beast Industries said today after Lorrayne Mavromatis filed a complaint seeing a jury trial against the company in North Carolina federal court. “There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us.”
The mordant and detailed action from Raleigh attorney Rebecca Mayer of the Noble Law Firm is looking for a wide range of unspecified damages from the deep-pocketed YouTube and Feastables superstar. Citing being “excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, [and] harassed” during her 2002-2025 tenure at the home of Prime Video‘s Beast Games, self-described “rising star” Mavromatis also wants “a declaratory judgment that Defendants violated” the Family and Medical Leave Act during and in the aftermath of the birth of her first child by making her work.
Beast Industries, which has faced a number of corporate culture complaints over the years, denies all that.
To make its point, the company provided a screen shot of Mavromatis’ March 27, 2025 signature in receipt of the employee handbook that laid out FMLA and parental leave policies at Beast Industries –policies the complaint claims she was kept in the dark about in the “boys’ club environment at MrBeast.” Making public internal communications, Beast Industries, which grew fast and furious over the past decade to the 480 million YouTube subscribers it has now, also proclaimed that in fact it was Mavromatis who asked to work during what should have been her maternity leave.
Of note, it seems that there has been prior outreach from reps for Mavromatis in search of a settlement over her allegations, sources close to the situation tell me. While it is unclear if there are ongoing discussions or mediation running on a parallel track to today’s complaint, Mavromatis’ team did propose a big-bucks dollar solution, I hear. Beast Industries rejected that solution, leading to today’s filing and its claims of a “hostile work environment” and more.
“During her employment, Plaintiff herself experienced and observed other female employees be subjected to sexual harassment that was both condoned and/or perpetuated by their supervisors,” the 24-page document states of Mavromatis, who says she was demoted to social media manager in the dead-end merch department in her final days at the company.
“For example, the Company’s former CEO James Warren (“Warren”) both subjected Plaintiff to sexual harassment (making her meet him in his home for one-on-one meetings while commenting on the way she looked in her clothes) and dismissed her complaint about a male client’s unwelcome advances toward her as nothing (telling her that she should be honored that the client was hitting on her),” the filing adds. “When she asked why Donaldson would not work with her on certain projects, Warren told her that she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy.”
To that last accusation, what the filing says later on is a bit different with more implied than actually stated.
“When Plaintiff asked Warren why Jimmy would not meet with her regarding certain projects, Warren told Plaintiff, “Jimmy gets really awkward around beautiful women. Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom,’” the complaint says in an extensive and situation-specific section spotlighting how “sexually inappropriate comments were acceptable at MrBeast and that complaining could adversely affect her employment.”
Amidst the other claims, this one has hit hard at Beast Industries, and the company got quite personal in refuting it.
“That’s ridiculous,” a spokesperson told Deadline of the masturbation inference.
“This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines. It’s also disgusting that the lawsuit is exploiting Jimmy’s eye condition and Crohn’s disease — two medical conditions he has been publicly open about — in their attempt to secure a multimillion-dollar payday.”
In another case, the NFL-feted MrBeast is fighting a class action suit against Beast Industries and Amazon alleging that Season 1 of Beast Games “subjected the contestants to unreasonable, unsafe, and unlawful employment conditions.” That September 2024 filing in Los Angeles Superior Court claims production of the 10-episode game show featuring 1,000 players competing for a $5 million prize by breaking world records and completing challenges also saw instances of sexual harassment, left some contestants hospitalized, and supposedly tried to scam tax credits out of the state of Nevada.
Prime Video’s Beast Games was renewed for a second season which debuted January 7 and ran to February 25, with contestant Tyler Lucas winning the big prize.