Diplo’s legal troubles continue to mount.
Three years after he was accused of harassment and sex crimes, the Mississippi-born DJ was hit with more allegations stemming from his relationship with Shelly Auguste. Pitchfork reports that Auguste, who allegedly met Diplo in 2018, filed a police report with the Los Angeles Police Department back in August, accusing her ex-boyfriend of distributing her nude photos without her consent. The case has since been moved to the LA County’s District Attorney office “where it is currently under review.”
Diplo and Auguste have been locked a legal battle since 2020, when they filed restraining orders against one another over alleged harassment. Auguste went on to file a civil lawsuit against the producer, born Thomas Wesley Pentz, whom she accused of recording and distributing sexually explicit videos of her without permission, as well as knowingly giving her a sexually transmitted disease. Diplo’s legal team denied the allegations.
“She has been peddling her lies around the country in a desperate attempt to harm Wes and those he loves, but she will not succeed,” Diplo’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, told Vulture in 2021.
Auguste’s 2023 filing includes similar allegations against the Grammy winner, as she has accused him of releasing her nude photographs without her consent. Auguste reportedly told police that she had sent “nude videos and photographs to [Diplo] voluntarily,” but the content was not to be shared with anyone else. She said that a woman contacted her on Instagram back in August, and revealed she had six nude photographs of her. Auguste told authorities that the images “were the photographs that either [Diplo] took or that she had given to him.”
According to the police report, Auguste is convinced that Diplo released the sexually explicit content as a form of revenge over her legal actions.
According to Rolling Stone, Auguste is now suing Diplo for “sexual battery, gender violence, intentional intrusion into private affairs, battery, assault, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud, as well as violation of the Ralph Civil Rights Act and violation of the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act.”
Diplo also filed a lawsuit against Auguste in 2021, accusing her of stalking, trespassing, and distributing private materials. The suit described Auguste as a “dangerously unstable” woman who made “relentless efforts to communicate” with Diplo after he ended their relationship.
The parties’ allegations will be addressed in a civil trial set for 2024.
“For more than three years, Shelly Auguste has been orchestrating an ongoing smear campaign against Wes—and this is just more of the same,” Freedman told Pitchfork about the recent police report. “Now, Ms. Auguste is at it yet again. But Wes will defend himself, and, just as he has done every time Ms. Auguste has defamed, harassed and attacked him and his family, he will win.”
