Three Meta executives were identified by name in a California lawsuit brought against OnlyFans, alleging the adult creator platform bribed its way to dominance.
In the federal court filing, Nick Clegg, Meta’s vice president of global policy, and Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president of the global business team, were identified as former “John Does” and accused of accepting bribes from OnlyFans to keep the platform on top of its competition. Clegg and Mendelsohn were allegedly identified by mistake, according to Gizmodo, which broke the story. A third employee, Cristian Perrella, was also identified in the filing. According to LinkedIn, an employee with the same name is the Trust and Safety Director at Facebook.
The development comes after a February lawsuit alleged unnamed Meta employees were working under the table to help OnlyFans by getting competitors “blacklisted” online. The suit, launched by sex workers in San Francisco federal court, alleges that Meta employees used tools meant to protect users from security threats to limit the visibility and click rate of sex workers on sites other than OnlyFans.
Wire transfer documents produced in court show funds transferred to accounts in the Philippines allegedly linked to Meta executives. A third account, according to the documents, was opened in the name of a “high-ranking Facebook executive’s young son.”
Caroline Nolan, Meta’s vice president of public affairs, told Gizmodo in an email that “the claims are false.”
Meta has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit over grounds that the case doesn’t meet the “Twiqbal test”—a term referring to two recent Supreme Court cases that raised the bar for plausibility in a federal case, effectively making it harder to sue in federal court.
