Thrillcall CEO Accused Of Misusing Funds, Firing Co-founders In Cover Up

Thrillcall, best known for its last minute event discovery and ticketing app, is at the center of serious legal disagreements that are just now making the news. A lawsuit was filed last month by two co-founders alleging that CEO Jonathan Leone, who is also Sausalito's Vice-Mayor, misused company funds in a variety of ways including purchasing "between $450,000 and $900,000 of Western Union transfers and MoneyGrams sent to three women in different countries with no connection to the company." But the sorry mess extends all the way back to an alleged initial oral agreement between the co-founders that was never finalized in print.

According to Erin Griffith and James Robinson, reporting for PandoDaily, the suit against Thrillcall co-founder and CEO Jonathan Leone was filed in mid-November by co-founders Chad Taylor and Matthew Tomaszewicz.

The lawsuit claims:

"that Leone purchased between $450,000 and $900,000 of Western Union transfers and MoneyGrams sent to three women in different countries with no connection to the company, that he hired unqualified friends for salaried positions, funded travel to states for conferences with little to do with work, and neglected a host of operational responsibilities such as not paying invoices, refusing to show up for work and deleting important corporate documents."

The plot gets nastier as Taylor and Tomaszewicz also claim that they'd discovered the money transfers earlier this year, "confronted" Leone and then got fired by Leone who claims to have "sole financial control and ownership of the corporation."

Leone, in a statement to PandoDaily, says the accusations are false and this lawsuit is a "dispute over percentage ownership."

The lawsuit references an initial oral agreement regarding shared ownership but the "share distribution was never reduced to a final signed writing" though all continued as if the oral agreement was in full effect.

This could be the end of Thrillcall though that remains to be seen.

On a more fundamental level, it's a strong reminder to get everything in writing no matter what anybody says.

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Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is building a writing hub at Flux Research. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.