Diplo potentially facing criminal charges over sexual misconduct allegation

Last year, EDM artist Diplo—a.k.a. Thomas Wesley Pentz—was accused of spreading revenge porn of a woman who he had filmed without her consent and of hiring a private investigator to allegedly follow her around and threaten her so she wouldn’t share the “disgusting details” (as she put it) that she knew about him. The woman, who has chosen not to be identified, went public with her accusations on Twitter as part of an attempt to get a restraining order against the musician, and now a new BuzzFeed report says the LAPD has been looking into the allegations and that the Los Angeles city attorney’s office is “considering criminal charges” against Pentz.

The BuzzFeed report expands on the allegations, saying the woman told police that Pentz recorded multiple videos without her permission, distributed “at least one” of them, and also “knowingly” infected her with chlamydia. BuzzFeed’s sources further indicate that the LAPD investigated a video that was posted multiple times on Twitter last year, with some anonymous account sharing it with users who had posted about supporting Pentz’s accuser. The police also looked into other videos that the accuser says Pentz sent to her and BuzzFeed says they also “interviewed some of the subjects of those videos.”

Pentz, for the record, has denied all of the claims, going so far as to get a temporary restraining order against the accuser and suing her for “stalking, trespassing, and distribution of private materials.” BuzzFeed doesn’t know if he also went to the police, though. (The “private materials” bit is apparently in reference to the accuser allegedly posting a naked photo of Pentz online, among other things.)

BuzzFeed also has a timeline of the allegations, including “radically different” accounts from the two parties of how they know each other, and texts and private messages about the allegations that pre-date the accuser’s tweets and the anonymous release of the video. In addition to that, the BuzzFeed story notes that Pentz has been accused of having inappropriate relationships with younger women in the past, including accusations from Azealia Banks. Pentz has, again, denied any wrongdoing, referring to stories about the allegations as “garbage news” in a social media post.