A woman accusing Diplo of sharing “revenge porn” has dropped her lawsuit against the DJ, just weeks after a federal judge ruled she would need to reveal her identity if she wanted to proceed with the case.
In a court filing on Monday (Jan. 13), attorneys for the unnamed “Jane Doe” asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit — a case that claims the DJ (Thomas Wesley Pentz) filmed sexual encounters without the woman’s knowledge and shared them on Snapchat.
The motion asked the judge to dismiss the case “without prejudice” — meaning the woman could still refile it at some point in the future. Her attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision to drop their case or whether they plan to refile it.
The move came two weeks after Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani ruled that the Doe must use her real name to keep pursuing her accusations against Diplo. The judge acknowleged that the allegations were “sensitive and of a highly personal nature,” but said the accuser had failed to legally show that she needs to remain anonymous.
“Those using the courts must be prepared to accept the public scrutiny that is an inherent part of public trials,” the judge wrote, quoting from another old ruling. “Plaintiff has not sufficiently demonstrated that this case warrants an exception.”
At the time, Doe’s attorneys vowed to appeal that ruling, saying revealing her name “risks permanently linking a survivor to their trauma.” The status of any such appellate effort is unclear after Monday’s voluntary dismissal.
Diplo’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the voluntary dismissal of the case against their client. In previous statements, they have strongly denied the lawsuit’s allegations, calling it an “obvious shakedown attempt.”
In a complaint filed in June, Diplo’s accuser alleged she’d had a consensual sexual relationship with the DJ from 2016 to 2023, and that she occasionally “gave defendant Diplo permission to record them having sex.” But she said she later learned that he had sometimes secretly recorded them and then shared footage on the internet “without plaintiff’s knowledge or consent.”
“Plaintiff brings this action to recover for the emotional and physical injuries she endured because of Diplo’s actions and to make sure no one else is forced to suffer the privacy invasions and physical and mental trauma she felt and continues to feel to this day,” Doe’s attorneys wrote.
The lawsuit accused Diplo of violating the federal Violence Against Women Act, which was amended in 2022 to ban the sharing of “intimate” images without the consent of those depicted in them. The case also cited an earlier revenge porn law enacted by the state of California.
The abrupt dismissal of the Jane Doe case came a week after lawyers for Diplo announced a deal to resolve a messy legal dispute with Shelly Auguste, another former romantic partner of the DJ/producer, as reported by Rolling Stone.
In that case, which had been set to go to trial this month, Diplo accused the woman of stalking, trespassing and releasing revenge porn of him. She had also leveled her own set of legal claims against him, including sexual battery and assault.
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