MrBeast aka Jimmy Donaldson is one of the biggest YouTube success stories of all time. He’s worth $700 million and is famous for putting people through these crazy ass challenges in order to win money. If you have kids between, say eight and 18, you probably know who he is. And if you don’t know who he is, I guarantee that your kids do, lol. MrBeast and his crew have generally been in good standing, reputation-wise. A lot of adults have side-eyed the wild challenges he makes people do for money and how he’s filmed his good deeds for his Beast Philanthropy channel, but there didn’t seem to be any major problematic behaviors.
That’s all changing now. In July, one of his longtime collaborators faced allegations of grooming. (I don’t know how credible they are; you can read about it here.) Last month, the NYT published an investigative article sourced by five anonymous contestants on the upcoming competition show, Beast Games. The contestants claim that they were subjected to “chronic mistreatment, degradation, and…hostile working conditions.” Now, those five contestants have filed a class action lawsuit against MrBeast and Amazon. This suit alleges sexual harassment, unpaid wages, cheating on taxes, unsafe conditions, false advertising, and more.
As the anonymous “Contestant 5” states in the heavily redacted complaint seeing a jury trial, “I expected to be challenged, but I didn’t think I would be treated like nothing — less than nothing.”
Possibly running into the millions in damages if certified, the September 16 filing in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that MrBeast and the Jeff Bezos-created streamer “subjected the Contestants to unreasonable, unsafe, and unlawful employment conditions.” With claims of sexual harassment, failure to prevent harassment, false advertising, and failure to pay minimum wage or overtime, those conditions saw “several contestants …hospitalized,” the 54-page document alleges.
Perhaps most damaging corporately to MrBeast and Amazon is the allegation that the supposedly $100 million-budgeted Beast Games production played fast and loose with the rules to secure Nevada tax credits. The filing says Beast Games made “Plaintiffs and the Proposed Class to enter into illegal contracts and providing false information to the State of Nevada to obtain unearned tax credits.”
In supposedly misclassifying contestants like the five initial plaintiffs as Nevada citizens and otherwise, the far-from-skint MrBeast and Amazon were able to snag about $2,252,523 in incentives from the Silver State.
Based on MrBeast’s already successful YouTube show, back in the spring Beast Games gave itself bragging rights “to become the biggest reality competition series ever with 1000 contestants competing for a $5 million dollar cash prize.” Drawing in around 1,000 participants, MrBeast serves as Beast Games host and executive producer, with the show set to premiere exclusively later this year or in early 2025 on Prime Video domestically and internationally.
Neither representatives for the influencer, born Jimmy Donaldson, nor Amazon responded to request from Deadline for comment on the complaint. If and when they do, this post will be updated.
In echoes of the NYT article on alleged mistreatment on the Las Vegas set of the Beast Games, claims by the five unnamed contestants who filed the action detail “suffering physical and mental complications while being subjected to chronic mistreatment, degradation and, for the female contestants, hostile working conditions.”
According to the complaint, none of this was by accident as “Defendants exercised total control over the manner, means and timing of the work performed by the Contestants, by controlling essentially every aspect of their lives during the production of the show.” That control was in part fueled by the so-called “How to Succeed in MrBeast Productions” manual, which pushed mantras like “empower the boys” and “let them be idiots.” Still, the filings proclaims that “Defendants’ management, up to and including senior management and ownership” were fully aware of the alleged “violence and sexual harassment” on Beast Games, and did nothing.
“The foregoing acts by Defendants created an environment during Beast Games that was so void of humane standards that Defendants ended up volunteering to cover the cost of the Contestants’ therapy, it was that bad,” the complaint exclaims.
Lordy, if even half of these things are true, then this is really bad. Really, really bad. I feel awful for what those contestants allegedly went through. I cannot believe that some contestants even ended up in the hospital! That’s awful, and it’s all probably well-documented, too. How could MrBeast Production members not do anything when concerns were raised? I’m so disappointed in them. In the end, it’ll probably be the tax stuff that ends up as a criminal lawsuit against them. I wonder how much of this was fostered by MrBeast Productions and how much of it was an environment created by them going “Hollywood” and bringing Amazon’s production people into the equation. Ugh, those poor contestants.
Photos credit: : IMAGO/Zoonar.com/Lumeimages.com / Avalon and Instagram
Let the downfall begin.
I have always thought there was something “Off” about Jimmy.
Tax evasion, huh?
Get all the $$.
Then go after the other multi-millionaires who get out of paying their fair share.
Then fix the tax laws and start rebuilding society.
How we treat each other these days is so gross. People just blatantly use each other now for crap like this . honestly, there should have been arrests after this whole incident, esp since people were separated and kept from their meds and some needed hospitalizations. Mr Beast caused true harm, there should be charges against Amazon, him and his production company
I don’t follow MrBeast though I know vaguely who he is. He isn’t personally being sued for sexual assault towards any specific female contestant correct? The contestants are suing Beast Productions and specifying that the conditions on the show were hostile and degrading? It doesn’t make it any better but I’m just trying to understand it’s not his behavior specifically that brought about this lawsuit. At this point, I just assume any influencer with a mega huge following, male or female, will have some kind of downfall (we’ve all seen how crazy it gets in the beauty influencer community). Colleen Ballinger, the Paul Brothers, Shane Dawson (I couldn’t even tell you what Shane Dawson did, I just know he’s been canceled a few times). These people need to be held accountable that just because they have a huge following and loads of money, they don’t get to exploit people and do whatever they want.
Not sure we can read into suing the production company instead of him personally. It could be that by suing the company, plaintiffs are going straight to the insurer, which will push for settlement. Could be the same strategy Cassie took with Diddy. She sued his LLC and forced a settlement rather than choose a knock-down-drag out against someone who will go to any lengths to protect his misdeeds.
Our kids learned about this creep at school from friends, as most kids do pick things up from their peers. My son at the time was 10? And he was so excited about this guy. We had to have a discussion about being wary about grownups offering kids things for free. We had had the talk before but you have to continue the talks throughout their young lives. Something about him set off alarm bells for me as a mom. My kid eventually grew out of being a fan and stopped begging me to let him participate in whatever challenges this guy was doing. Yuck. These poor kids.
Discussed this with the kids last night. Our main point was as parents was that if someone has to tell you over and over and over how good/amazing/generou/kind they are a person – they are in fact, not likely to be any of the things.
This is horrible. Are no regulations or protections for these reality shows, social media things?
Not the first time allegations have come out about Mr Beasts’s sketchy productions and even sketchier teams (now former employees, one including a registered sex offender). Another former associate of his also faced allegations of sexual misconduct and grooming minors.