Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson is a Goliath of the YouTube scene, and having come a long way from his early Let's Play days wandering around the Overworld of Minecraft, he now owns the most-subscribed channel on the platform. Known for building Willy Wonka-inspired chocolate factories, surviving the deadliest places on Earth, making people live in grocery stores, and even recreating Squid Games, MrBeast has a reported net worth of a billion - although he'd dispute that.
With MrBeast's notoriety, it also means he's got the eyes of the world on him. This has landed him in some awkward legal situations, especially surrounding the recent release of Amazon's Beast Games.
As well as one worker claiming they were nearly 'crushed' on the set, there have been lawsuits of sexual harassment and contestant mistreatment. Now, Donaldson has put his own legal proceedings into motion for a very different reason, taking action against a former employee who he claims has been spying on him.
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Polygon reports how an April 4 lawsuit has been filed in a North Carolina court, accusing Leroy Nabors of misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract. Among the allegations read by the outlet, Donaldson's team maintains that Nabors has installed hidden cameras "throughout Beast’s offices."
Nabors was an IT contractor originally hired in 2023 and was "responsible for working on Beast’s IT network, including working with the servers that housed post-production Beast content."
The lawsuit maintains that Nabors subcontracted his daughter’s company (Vine Networks) to help manage MrBeast's IT network.
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It's then said that Nabors was moved to a 'special projects' team in late 2023 and handled the likes of content production, fundraising, and political advocacy. He was then fired on October 1, 2024.
The sensitive nature of Nabors' work reportedly required him to sign an NDA, which Donaldson's lawyers claimed he broke by downloading company data in the run-up to being fired. Beast Industries says that Nabors "downloaded more than one thousand Beast confidential files," including the likes of "highly confidential information about business strategy, financial information, capitalization tables, financing documents, individual employee personal information, and other MrBeast intellectual property."
Lawyers suggest that Nabors knew he was going to be fired, and in anticipation, had been syncing files to a personal DropBox account, including "thousands of Beast’s most confidential files."
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It's something Nabors has denied.
An internal investigation apparently uncovered 'multiple hidden cameras', with lawyers writing that while "no Beast employee recalls installing those cameras," Nabors was "well known among colleagues to surreptitiously record meetings." Beast Industries representatives think that Nabors and Vine Networks were controlling the cameras.
Donaldson and Beast Industries want access to anything obtained by Nabors, are seeking damages, and a permanent injunction "ordering the return of all Beast information improperly in his possession."
Donaldson is no stranger to wrangling with ex-employees and speaking out about it, but at the time of writing, neither side has publicly responded to the lawsuit.