The media company led by MrBeast, the YouTube megastar whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has been sued by a former employee, who alleges she was subjected to years of sexual harassment, gender bias and retaliation by Donaldson and other senior leadership. Donaldson’s company, Beast Industries, denied the allegations and called them “categorically false.”
Lorrayne Mavromatis is a former exec who worked for MrBeast from Aug. 22, 2022, until Nov. 6, 2025. She was hired as Beast Industries’ head of Instagram, at an annual salary of $100,000. In June 2023, she was promoted to head of creative, and her annual salary was increased to $120,000. Shortly afterwards, Mavromatis was promoted again and her salary increased to $250,000, according to her lawsuit.
In her complaint (available at this link), filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Mavromatis describes a workplace culture in which harassment of women employees was normalized and complaints were dismissed. She says she was terminated after raising these concerns to her employer and taking maternity leave.
“Due to MrBeast’s willful violations of the [the Family and Medical Leave Act] and intentional violations of North Carolina state law, Plaintiff seeks lost wages, lost benefits, reinstatement, front pay in lieu of reinstatement, liquidated damages, compensatory damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, pre- and post-judgment interest, and reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs,” Mavromatis’ complaint says.
Beast Industries said in a statement to Variety: “This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us.”
MrBeast’s Beast Industries has over 500 employees.
Mavromatis’ lawsuit claims that during her employment, she “experienced and observed other female employees be subjected to sexual harassment that was both condoned and/or perpetuated by their supervisors.”
For example, according to her complaint, the company’s former CEO James Warren subjected Mavromatis “to sexual harassment (making her meet him in his home for one-on-one meetings while commenting on the way she looked in her clothes) and dismissed her complaint about a male client’s unwelcome advances toward her as nothing (telling her that she should be honored that the client was hitting on her). When she asked why Donaldson would not work with her on certain projects, Warren told her that she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy.”
According to Mavromatis’ suit, when she complained about the sexual harassment and the hostile environment she and other women were experiencing to Beast Industries’ head of HR, she was told that her claims were “unsubstantiated,” and “she was promptly demoted and transferred to an obscure role known by MrBeast employees as the division where ‘careers go to die.’”
The company fired Mavromatis less than three weeks after she returned from pregnancy-related leave, telling her that she was “too high caliber” for the role “she was demoted into after formally complaining about sexual harassment and the hostile work environment at MrBeast,” according to the lawsuit.
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