Report: Diplomat could be accused of sexual misconduct

Star DJ Diplo faces charges of invasion of privacy and intentionally transmitting a sexually transmitted disease to a person a year after a former partner accused him of sexual misconduct.

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it is considering criminal charges against the musician, whose real name is Thomas Wesley Pentz.

The allegations stem from a complaint filed with the LAPD in October 2020 by a 25-year-old woman who accused the 42-year-old of recording sexually explicit videos of her without her consent and sharing at least one video without her permission. The woman, whose name The Daily Beast is not naming, claims Pentz knowingly infected her with chlamydia.

She also claims that Pentz raped her in a Las Vegas hotel room in July 2019. According to BuzzFeed News, local police declined to press charges on that allegation.

The Daily Beast has reached out to Pentz’s team for comment. He has previously denied the allegations.

The woman claimed she first met Pentz on Twitter when she was 17 years old. The EDM artist allegedly contacted her privately in her direct messages. Eventually, the two met in person. In March 2018, when she was 21, she had consensual sex with him.

In court documents, she claims she tested positive for chlamydia shortly after the encounter in Las Vegas in 2019. She claims Pentz transmitted the STI to her, stating that he was her first and only sexual partner at the time.

According to the woman’s social media pages, the two communicated regularly via text and Snapchat, and she posted videos showing the two in the same room. Pentz’s team does not deny their relationship, although they portrayed it as a brief romantic fling.

Eventually, the relationship deteriorated, and in October 2020, the woman spoke out in a series of tweets accusing Pentz of manipulating her and claiming he hired a private investigator to “scare” her and keep her from talking about the “disgusting details” she might reveal about him.

“I SPECIFICALLY asked him not to do this and his response was ‘Fuck it. I’m recording it,'” she wrote in a Twitter thread about Pentz allegedly making a sex tape of her despite her protests.

“I never had the will or intention to expose Diplo because I didn’t want all the years I spent talking to him and spending time with him to be for nothing…or to end badly. But slowly I began to realize that he is a huge manipulative liar/gaslighter who preys on young women of ALL races (let’s be honest), but primarily young naive women of color.”

Woman accuses Diplo of sexually abusing her since she was 17 and producing “revenge porn”; judge issues restraining order

A few days after the Twitter thread was posted, the woman claimed that a nude photo she had sent only to Pentz had been posted online, prompting her to obtain a restraining order against him in November, accusing the musician of distributing revenge porn.

The judge granted the woman a restraining order against Pentz, but Pentz also granted one against the woman after accusing her of also posting a nude photo of him online. Although both restraining orders were lifted, the woman stated online that they tried to settle privately and failed.

In April, they were back in court. Pentz demanded damages and the woman countered with a civil lawsuit in June. She accused the DJ of “targeting and sexually abusing very young black women and girls.”

This is not the first time Pentz has been accused of questionable relationships with young black and brown women.

The same month that the woman accused Pentz of abusing her on Twitter, he was criticized for allowing then-19-year-old TikTok star and aspiring musician Quenlin Blackwell to live in his Los Angeles mansion. She insisted their relationship was purely platonic, calling him her “LA dad,” while Pentz defended himself, saying the two had been working on music together. Blackwell moved out the following month.

Also in October 2020, 30-year-old rapper Azealia Banks claimed on her podcast that Pentz discovered her on Myspace and credited him with launching her music career. But she said, “I had sex with Diplo when I was 17… yeah, I had to give him teenage pussy for that. He always goes after young ethnic girls.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!

Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.