firm

Reporting from Washington — To any nefarious hackers looking for information that could be used to sway elections or steal Americans’ identities, the file compiled by a GOP data firm called Deep Root Analytics offered all manner of possibilities.

There in one place was detailed personal information about almost every voter in the U.S. It was a collection of some 9.5 billion data points that helped the firm assess not only how those Americans would probably vote, but their projected political preferences. In some cases, the data collectors had scoured people’s histories on Reddit, the social media platform, to match vote history with social media use, and well-informed predictions were made about where each voter would stand on issues as personal as abortion and stem cell research.

It’s the kind of sensitive information that, if a bank or a big-box retailer or almost any other corporation had failed to protect it, would have triggered major trouble with regulators. But there it sat on the Internet, without so much as a password to guard it, for 12 days.

Luckily for the Republican Party and Deep Root, an Arlington, Va.-based firm that handles data management and analysis for the party, it was a cybersecurity consultant who came across the treasure-trove of political data this month, not a foreign agent. There is no indication that the database had been tapped by any other unauthorized parties while it was unprotected.

But the exposure of the data, which some are describing as the largest leak of voter information in history, is a jolting reminder of how deeply the political parties are probing into the lives of voters and how vulnerable the information they are compiling is to theft.

The Deep Root incident is the latest in a series of such problems with political data, the most infamous being the case of the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee. As cybersecurity experts sound an increasingly loud alarm about the potential consequences, the lapses keep happening — often with nobody held accountable for them.

“This is a catalog of human lives, with intrinsic details,” said Mike Baukes, chief executive of UpGuard, the Mountain View, Calif., firm that came across the file during a routine scan of cloud systems.

“Every voter in America is potentially in there. The scale of it is just staggering, and the fact that it was left wide open is wholly irresponsible.…This is happening all the time. We are continually finding these things. It is just staggering.”

Privacy experts were skeptical that political operatives will change their ways following the latest incident.

“The state of security for massive data sets is so incredibly poor despite a daily drumbeat of data breached,” said Timothy Sparapani, a former director of public policy for Facebook who is now a data privacy consultant at the firm SPQR Strategies, based in Washington. “It is shocking. It is embarrassing. People ought to lose their jobs.”

Sparapani said if the culprit had been a private firm, it would be subjected to punitive actions by attorneys general, consumer lawsuits and big fines from regulators. But political operations face no such repercussions.

“As a voter, you are left with almost no recourse because our laws have not caught up to the massive computing power which is readily available to gather enormous data sets and make them searchable at the click of a button,” he said. “The breadth and depth of data collection by these companies is not well understood. If it were, I think the average voter would be frightened.”

UpGuard was able to access the file merely by guessing a Web address. It alerted Deep Root as well as federal authorities.

Deep Root apologized in a statement, but also suggested the incident had been overblown.

The data file “is our proprietary analysis to help inform local-television ad buying,” the statement said. It noted that much of the voter information the analysis is built on is “readily provided by state government offices.” The firm said it has put security procedures in place to prevent future leaks.

Other digital strategists warned, however, that the failure to protect such detailed information not only raised major privacy and security concerns, but also may have tipped off political adversaries to the inner workings of the Republican Party’s closely guarded digital strategy.

The GOP contracted with Deep Root during the presidential campaign. The firm’s co-founder, Alex Lundry, led the data efforts of GOP nominee Mitt Romney in 2012 and then worked for the unsuccessful presidential campaign of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush last year.

GOP officials said the data belonging to the party that was exposed was limited to very basic information about voters, such as their party registration. They said none of the GOP’s sensitive strategic data was exposed. The party has suspended work with the firm pending an investigation by Deep Root into security procedures.

The failure by Deep Root to protect its massive database was particularly troubling to some advocates at a time when Congress is investigating how Russia exploited data vulnerabilities to meddle in last year’s presidential election.

“This is data used for opinion manipulation,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit research group Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington. “It needs to be regulated. And there needs to be consequence for breaches. We have a major problem in this country with data security, and it’s getting worse.” The foundation wants Congress to hold hearings on political data security.

But holding political parties and contractors accountable for their data practices has proven tricky. David Berger, an attorney with the Bay Area-based firm Girard Gibbs who has represented consumers affected by data breaches at Anthem and Home Depot, said part of the problem is voters are not demanding changes loudly enough.

When a retail company fails to protect the privacy of its customers, Berger said, the company suffers and lawmakers hear about it from the victims.

“When people see Deep Root, they are not going to necessarily associate that with the [Republican Party] or anything else,” he said. “If your average American knew the amounts of data and profiling that is already put together by these companies about every single one of us, people would be very concerned. But there’s no face here, and they try to keep quiet.”

Halper reported from Washington and Dave from Los Angeles.

[email protected]

Follow me: @evanhalper

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Walt Disney Co. on Wednesday said it finalized its deal to acquire a majority stake in FuboTV and swiftly combined its Hulu + Live TV business with the sports-focused operation.

The union creates the nation’s sixth largest pay-TV service with nearly 6 million domestic subscribers.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Similar to competitors DirecTV, YouTube TV and Charter Spectrum, both Hulu + Live TV and Fubo distribute traditional channels including broadcasters ABC, CBS and cable channels Fox News, Bravo and ESPN.

The combined company will be overseen by a nine-member board led by Brad Bird, former chairman of Walt Disney International. The firm will continue to offer Fubo and Hulu + Live TV as separate services available through their respective apps.

Disney’s investment plans were announced in January, after the much smaller Fubo sued Disney and two other media companies over their plans to launch a high-profile streaming joint venture, Venu Sports. Fubo argued the collaboration of Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery was “a sports cartel,” one that would crush its business.

A judge agreed based on anti-trust concerns, blocking further development of Venu.

Disney’s deal to acquire 70% of New York-based Fubo ended that litigation.

The combined business will be led by Fubo Chief Executive David Gandler, who co-founded the service, and Fubo’s management team.

“Since Fubo’s founding a decade ago, our vision has always been to build a consumer-first streaming platform defined by innovation and value,” Gandler said in a statement. “Together with Disney, we’re creating a more flexible streaming ecosystem that gives consumers greater choice, while driving profitability and sustainable growth.”

His firm will have access to a $145 million term loan that Disney agreed to provide. Fubo’s ad sales team will join Disney’s sales organization.

The company’s stock will continue to be publicly traded under the FUBO ticker. Existing Fubo shareholders represent about 30% of the company. Shares were up slightly to $3.95 in mid-day trading.

The deal removes a major constraint on raising capital for OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and values the firm at $500bn.

Microsoft and OpenAI have reached a deal to allow the ChatGPT maker to restructure itself into a public-benefit corporation, valuing OpenAI at $500bn and giving it more freedom in its business operations.

The deal, unveiled on Tuesday, removes a major constraint on raising capital for OpenAI that has existed since 2019.

At the time, it had signed an agreement with Microsoft that gave the tech giant rights over much of OpenAI’s work in exchange for costly cloud computing services needed to carry it out. As its ChatGPT service exploded in popularity, those limitations had become a notable source of tension between the two companies.

Microsoft will still hold a stake of about $135bn, or 27 percent, in OpenAI Group PBC, which will be controlled by the OpenAI Foundation, a nonprofit, the companies said.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington in the United States, has invested $13.8bn in OpenAI, with Tuesday’s deal implying that the firm had generated a return of nearly 10 times its investment.

Shares of Microsoft rose 2.5 percent, sending its market value above $4 trillion again.

The deal keeps the two firms intertwined until at least 2032, with a massive cloud computing contract and with Microsoft retaining some rights to OpenAI products and artificial intelligence (AI) models until then – even if OpenAI reaches artificial general intelligence (AGI), the point at which AI systems can match a well-educated human adult.

Simplified corporate structure

With more than 700 million weekly users as of September, ChatGPT has exploded in popularity to become the face of AI for many consumers after OpenAI’s founding as a nonprofit AI safety group.

As the company grew, the Microsoft deal constrained OpenAI’s ability to raise funds from outside investors and secure computing contracts as the crush of ChatGPT users and its research into new models caused its computing needs to skyrocket.

“OpenAI has completed its recapitalization, simplifying its corporate structure,” Bret Taylor, the OpenAI Foundation’s board chair, said in a blog post. “The nonprofit remains in control of the for-profit, and now has a direct path to major resources before AGI arrives.”

Microsoft’s previous 2019 agreement had many provisions that rested on when OpenAI reached that point, and the new deal requires an independent panel to verify OpenAI’s claims it has reached AGI.

“OpenAI still faces ongoing scrutiny around transparency, data usage, and safety oversight. But overall, this structure should provide a clearer path forward for innovation and accountability,” said Adam Sarhan, CEO of 50 Park Investments.

Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson, said the deal “resolves the longstanding issue of OpenAI being organized as a not-for-profit [organisation] and settles the ownership rights of the technology vis-a-vis Microsoft. The new structure should provide more clarity on OpenAI’s investment path, thus facilitating further fundraising.”

Microsoft also said that it has secured a deal with OpenAI where the ChatGPT maker will purchase $250bn of Microsoft Azure cloud computing services. In exchange, Microsoft will no longer have a right of first refusal to provide computing services to OpenAI.

Microsoft also said that it will not have any rights to hardware produced by OpenAI. In March, OpenAI bought longtime Apple design chief Jony Ive’s startup io Products in a $6.5bn deal.

L.A. County is bringing on a retired judge to tackle a $4-billion question: How can officials ensure that real victims are compensated from the biggest sex abuse payout in U.S. history — and not people who made up their claims?

The county has tapped Daniel Buckley, a former presiding judge of the county’s Superior Court, to vet cases brought by Downtown LA Law Group after The Times found nine people represented by the firm who said they were paid to sue the county by recruiters. Four of the plaintiffs said they were told to fabricate the claims.

Downtown LA Law Group, or DTLA, has denied paying any of its roughly 2,700 clients, but agreed to cover the cost of Buckley to examine their cases in the $4-billion sex abuse settlement.

In a letter sent to clients Monday, Andrew Morrow, the lead attorney in the firm’s sex abuse cases, noted there are “additional safeguards” and “vetting protocols” underway following recent reports of paid clients, but did not specifically mention the new judge.

“While we categorically deny this ever occurred, we take these matters seriously and welcome the implementation of additional review procedures to ensure false claims do not move forward in the process,” wrote Morrow, the chairman of the firm’s mass torts department.

On Oct. 17, Dawyn Harrison, the top attorney for the county, requested an investigation from the State Bar based on The Times’ reporting, saying she believed some of the settlement would flow to “the pockets of the plaintiffs’ bar” rather than victims.

“The actions described in the article, if true, are despicable and run afoul of ethical duties of attorneys and criminal law in California,” Harrison wrote in a letter to Erika Doherty, the bar’s interim executive director. “I request the State Bar investigate all of the potential fraudulent and illegal activities described in this letter.”

DTLA declined to comment last week. The firm has previously said it works “hard to present only meritorious claims and have systems in place to help weed out false or exaggerated allegations.”

The bulk of the claims will be reviewed by retired Superior Court Judge Louis Meisinger, who will decide awards between $100,000 and $3 million.

The amount will depend on the severity of the abuse, the impact on the victim’s life and the amount of evidence provided, according to the allocation protocol. The money will be paid out over five years unless the victim opts to get a one-time check for $150,000.

If the judges find cases they believe are fraudulent, the county can either resolve them through a $50,000 payment or get them removed from the settlement. The county saves money in that case, but runs the risk of the plaintiff continuing to litigate and landing a larger payout from a jury trial.

It’s unusual — but not unheard of — for a neutral arbiter to be appointed to investigate cases from a specific firm in a massive settlement.

Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Barbara Houser, who is overseeing the $2.4-billion trust for victims of the Boy Scouts of Americas sex abuse cases, said last month that she had asked for an “independent third party” to vet the claims brought by Slater Slater Schulman after finding a pattern of “irregularities” and “procedural and factual problems” among its plaintiffs.

Slater Slater Schulman, headquartered in New York City, represents roughly 14,000 victims in the Boy Scouts case. It also represents roughly 3,700 people in the L.A. County settlement — the most of any firm, by far.

On Oct. 14, Lawrence Friedman, a former Department of Justice attorney who headed up the federal watchdog office for the bankruptcy system, spearheaded a blistering motion asking Houser to reduce Slater’s attorneys fees, which he estimated were at least $20 million. Friedman is seeking to push them out of the case, alleging the firm had “run amok” and “dangled the prospect of lottery sized payouts” in front of clients without vetting them.

“The SLATER law firm has little if any quality controls in place to validate the information in the 14,600 claims other than validating that they were real people who had filed the claim,” the motion stated. “…What SLATER has effectively created is simply a ‘Claims Machine’ designed to spit out huge wads of cash for itself!”

Clifford Robert, an outside attorney who is representing Slater Slater Schulman in its issues with the Boy Scouts cases, said the firm’s priority “has been and always will be securing justice on behalf of sexual abuse victims.”

Friedman, who has been outspoken about misconduct by mass tort attorneys in bankruptcy cases, said he now represents dozens of former Slater plaintiffs. The ex-clients alleged the firm waited more than a year before informing them their cases were undergoing additional vetting and their payments would be delayed. The firm told them this September about the outside investigation, which began in June 2024, according to an email attached to the Oct. 14 motion.

“We now agree that there are procedural and factual problems in some of our claim submissions to the Trust,” the three partners of Slater Slater Schulman wrote in a joint email to clients on Sept. 9. “Because of the problematic claims, we have agreed that all of our claim submissions to the Trust be vetted by an independent third party.”

Both judges who will vet the L.A. County sex abuse payouts work for Signature Resolution, a firm that specializes in resolving legal disputes outside the courtroom with a heavyweight roster of former judges and lawyers. Litigation management company BrownGreer will be the settlement administration arm, responsible for making sure the checks go out, liens are settled and the judges have the records they need from the 11,000 plaintiffs.

An additional 414 sex abuse claims that led to a separate $828-million settlement announced Oct. 17 will be reviewed by a different judge with the money distributed over the course of three years. That settlement, which involves claims from three firms that opted to litigate separately from the rest, is expected to receive final approval from the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The county will give the first tranche of money to the fund administered by BrownGreer in January, though it’s unclear when that money will trickle down to victims. The additional fraud review could slow the process as the judges will need to decide what all 11,000 of the claims are worth before any of the money goes out.

“They should have had their duck in the rows at the beginning,” said Tammy Rogers, 56, who sued over sex abuse at a county-run shelter for children in 2022.

Rogers said she has seen her bank account depleted recently following a shoulder surgery and her daughter’s funeral. She said she’s grown skeptical the settlement money will come her way anytime soon after reading the recent coverage of plaintiffs who say they were paid to sue.

“They should have known people were going to come out of the woodwork and do stuff like this,” she said. “They should have taken this time in the beginning, not in the end.”

Tammy Rogers, one of the plaintiffs who sued L.A. County over alleged abuse at MacLaren Hall, says she’s worried the extra vetting may delay payments to victims.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The number of claims has fluctuated in recent months as some of the firms have dismissed cases from plaintiffs who died, lost interest in their lawsuit, or stopped responding. Since the Times initial investigation ran on Oct. 2, DTLA has asked for the dismissal of at least 14 plaintiffs, according to a Times analysis of court records.

On Oct. 17, the firm asked a judge to dismiss three people in a 63-plaintiff lawsuit filed April 29 who told The Times they’d been paid to sue the county for sex abuse.

Quantavia Smith, whose case DTLA asked to be dismissed without prejudice, previously told The Times a recruiter paid her to join the litigation, but said she had a legitimate sex abuse claim against the county. She said the recruiter drove her to the office of a downtown law firm and then gave her $200.

The firm also asked to dismiss the cases of Nevada Barker and Austin Beagle with prejudice, meaning the cases can’t be refilled. The Times reported this month that the Texan couple were told to make up allegations of abuse at a county-run juvenile hall and provided a script by someone inside the firm’s downtown office. Both said they left the firm with $100.

The Times could not reach the alleged recruiter for comment.

Austin Beagle and Nevada Barker say they were unwittingly ushered into a fraudulent lawsuit against L.A. County filed by Downtown LA Law Group.

(Joe Garcia/For The Times)

On the morning the story published Oct. 16, Beagle and Barker each received an automated email from Vinesign, a legal e-signature site, telling them Downtown LA Law was requesting their signature on a document.

“I wish to affirm my claim that I was sexually abused in a Los Angeles County juvenile facility, and I was never paid to bring this claim forward,” stated the DTLA declaration, which they were asked to sign under the penalty of perjury.

Both said they did not want to sign as it was not true — and the opposite of what had just been published that morning in The Times. Beagle said the firm called twice that morning to discuss.

“We told them just dismiss it,” said Beagle. “We ain’t talking about it.”

Times assistant data and graphics editor Sean Greene contributed to this report.

SEOUL, Oct. 24 (UPI) — South Korea’s law firm industry is ruled by Kim & Chang by any measure, while a handful of other companies struggle to catch up with the leader.

In terms of annual revenue, Kim & Chang reportedly posted about $1 billion last year, which was roughly equivalent to the combined revenue of its next four competitors — Lee & Ko, Bae, Kim & Lee, Yulchon and Shin & Kim.

When it comes to the number of lawyers, Kim & Chang was also second to none.

According to the Ministry of Justice, 1,020 lawyers licensed in Korea worked for Kim & Chang as of July, followed by 565 at Lee & Ko, 519 at Shin & Kim, 497 at Bae, Kim & Lee and 433 at Yulchon.

Kim & Chang was the only South Korean law firm in 2024 to be featured among the world’s Top 100 in a survey published by The American Lawyer and Law.com International.

Observers expect that the outfit will maintain its dominant position for the foreseeable future.

“As a perennial leader, Kim & Chang enjoys a premium. Corporate clients with deep pockets tend to select the best law firm available regardless of cost,” Sungkyunkwan University former law school professor Choi June-seon told UPI.

“Kim & Chang has a recruiting team that picks the cream of the crop. Its reward system, based on intense internal competition, is also notable. Its dominance is unlikely to fade within five years. And I expect it to continue even for a decade,” he said.

Economic commentator Kim Kyeong-joon, formerly vice chairman at Deloitte Consulting Korea, said that Kim & Chang has savored a first-mover advantage. Named after two founders, Kim Young-moo and Chang Soo-kil, it was established in 1973.

“As one of the earliest law firms in South Korea, Kim & Chang has stood out by meeting the mounting demand from corporate clients at a time when the country was undergoing rapid economic growth,” Kim said in a phone interview.

“In addition to its long history, the firm’s strength lies in its diversity across practice areas and industries, including M&A consulting, finance, antitrust, tax and litigation in both Korean and foreign languages,” he said.

Kim & Chang said the full-service law firm employs up to 2,100 professionals, including accountants, tax specialists and patent attorneys, on top of Korean and international lawyers.

Yonhap Infomax, a subsidiary of Yonhap News Agency, reported that Kim & Chang advised on 168 M&A deals last year worth $25.95 billion, capturing a 35.88% market share and remaining atop the list for 12 consecutive years.

Shin & Kim ranked No. 2 with 19.8%, chased by Lee & Ko with 12.6%, and Yulchon with 10.31%.

During the first half of this year, Kim & Chang again topped the podium with a market share of 28.27%.

Globally renowned law firms have tapped into the South Korean market since the early 2010s, but they have failed to make their presence felt. Some even exited the country after failing to achieve significant results.

“From the perspective of global law firms, it would be very difficult to build networks within Korea’s tightly-knit legal community. That’s why they have languished,” Seoul-based consultancy Leaders Index CEO Park Ju-gun said. “The situation is not likely to change in the near future.”

Asked which company might emerge as a serious contender to Kim & Chang, Park named Yulchon, which has chalked up fast growth over the past several years. Even so, he projected that it would take quite a lot of time.

Founded in 1997 as a latecomer, Yulchon has risen to the top ranks on the back of its expertise in tax, antitrust, and regulatory affairs. Other major players were mostly launched in the 1970s and 1980s.

The judge ruled NSO caused ‘irreparable harm’ to Meta, but said an earlier award of $168m in damages was ‘excessive’.

A United States judge has granted an injunction barring Israeli spyware maker the NSO Group from targeting WhatsApp users, saying the firm’s software causes “direct harm” but slashed an earlier damages award of $168m to just $4m.

In a ruling on Friday granting WhatsApp owner Meta an injunction to stop NSO’s spyware from being used in the messaging service, district judge Phyllis Hamilton said the Israeli firm’s “conduct causes irreparable harm”, adding that there was “no dispute that the conduct is ongoing”.

Hamilton said NSO’s conduct “serves to defeat” one of the key purposes of the service offered by WhatsApp: privacy.

“Part of what companies such as WhatsApp are ‘selling’ is informational privacy, and any unauthorised access is an interference with that sale,” she said.

In her ruling, Hamilton said that evidence at trial showed that NSO reverse-engineered WhatsApp code to stealthily install its spyware Pegasus on users’ phones, and repeatedly redesigned it to escape detection and bypass security fixes.

NSO was founded in 2010 and is based in the Israeli seaside tech hub of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.

Pegasus – a highly invasive software marketed as a tool for law enforcement to fight crime and terrorism – allows operators to remotely embed spyware in devices.

NSO says it only sells the spyware to vetted and legitimate government law enforcement and intelligence agencies. But Meta, which owns WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit in California federal court in late 2019, accusing NSO of exploiting its encrypted messaging service to target journalists, lawyers and human rights activists with its spyware.

Independent experts have also said NSO’s software has been used by nation states, some with poor human rights records, to target critics.

Judge Hamilton said her broad injunction was appropriate given NSO’s “multiple design-arounds” to infect WhatsApp users – including missed phone calls and “zero-click” attacks – as well as the “covert nature” of the firm’s work more generally.

Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp, said in a statement that the “ruling bans spyware maker NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp and our global users again”.

“We applaud this decision that comes after six years of litigation to hold NSO accountable for targeting members of civil society. It sets an important precedent that there are serious consequences to attacking an American company,” he said.

Meta had asked Hamilton to extend the injunction to its other products – including Facebook, Instagram and Threads – but the judge ruled there was no way for her to determine if similar harms were being done on the other platforms without more evidence.

Hamilton also ruled that an initial award of $168m against NSO for damages to Meta in May this year was excessive, determining that the court did not have “sufficient basis” to support the jury’s initial calculation.

“There have simply not yet been enough cases involving unlawful electronic surveillance in the smartphone era for the court to be able to conclude that defendants’ conduct was ‘particularly egregious’,” Hamilton wrote.

The judge ruled that the punitive damages ratio should therefore be “capped at 9/1”, reducing the initial sum by about $164m to just $4m.

It felt like the kind of thing that must happen in Hollywood all the time: a hundred bucks to be a movie extra.

Austin Beagle, 31, and Nevada Barker, 30, said they were trying to sign up for food stamps this spring when someone offered them a background role outside a county social services office in Long Beach. They thought the gig seemed intriguing, albeit a bit unusual.

The offer came not from a casting director, but a man hawking free cellphones. The filming location was, oddly enough, a law firm in downtown Los Angeles.

Like many DTLA clients, Austin Beagle and Nevada Barker signed a retainer agreement that entitles the firm to 45% of their payout.

(Joe Garcia / For The Times)

Maybe this was how actors were recruited here, they figured. The couple had recently moved from the remote ranching town of Stinnett in the Texas panhandle, and the recruiter seemed to appreciate their Southern drawl. They hopped on a bus, excited to make $200 between them.

“They said we’d be extras,” said Beagle, who was unemployed at the time. “But when we got to the office, that’s not what it was at all.”

The couple said they arrived at the lobby of Downtown LA Law Group. A Times investigation published earlier this month found seven plaintiffs represented by the firm who claimed they received cash from recruiters to sue the county over sex abuse, which could violate state law. Two said they had never been abused and were told to manufacture their claims.

Downtown LA Law Group has denied any involvement with the recruiters who allegedly paid plaintiffs. The firm said in a statement it would never “encourage or tolerate anyone lying about being abused” and has been conducting additional screening to remove “false or exaggerated claims” from its caseload.

Four days after The Times’ investigation was published, the firm asked for a lawsuit on behalf of Carlshawn Stovall, one of the men who said he fabricated claims, to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the case cannot be refiled.

The firm requested a second case spurred by Juan Fajardo, who said he made up a claim using the name of a family member, to be dismissed with prejudice on Sept. 9 after Fajardo says he told lawyers he wanted to drop the lawsuit.

Now, with Beagle and Barker, two more have come forward to allege they were told to invent the stories that led to their lawsuits.

Austin Beagle and Nevada Barker said they’d been in Southern California only a few months when they were flagged down outside a social services office where they were hoping to enroll in food stamps. The couple have since moved back to Stinnett, Texas.

(Joe Garcia / For The Times)

The couple said that when they arrived at DTLA’s offices in April, a man came down to the lobby with a clipboard and gave them a piece of paper to memorize before going upstairs. They assumed this was the role they’d be playing — with room to go off script.

“They told us to say that we were sexually abused and harassed by the guards in … Las P? I can’t think of the institution’s name,” said Beagle, who added he was told to say the incidents occurred around 2005.

“The worse it was the better,” he recalled being told.

On April 29, Downtown LA Law Group filed a lawsuit against the county on behalf of 63 plaintiffs, including Beagle and Barker, who claimed they were abused at Los Padrinos, L.A. County’s juvenile hall in Downey. The couple are now part of the $4-billion settlement.

Allegations of potential fraud and pay-to-sue tactics have rocked both L.A. County government and powerhouse law firms, which are scrambling to figure out how to salvage the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

Perhaps no group has been shaken more than sex abuse victims themselves, who fear allegations of false claims could derail what they hoped would be a life-changing settlement.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Jimmy Vigil, 45, who sued the county in December 2022 for alleged sexual abuse by a probation officer at a detention camp in Lancaster.

Vigil said he was repeatedly molested as a 14-year-old and forced to masturbate in front of other teens while the guard watched.

“It makes me feel disgusted,” said Vigil, now a mental health case manager in Ventura County. “You have absolutely no clue what I went through. You have no clue how hard I have strived in life to make it to where I am at today.”

Jimmy Vigil, now a mental health case worker in Ventura, said he was repeatedly molested as a teenager and forced to masturbate in front of other teens.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Barker and Beagle said that after memorizing the card with the basics of their story, they were taken upstairs to a room at DTLA’s office where about 20 people were waiting. Everyone seemed confused, they said.

They “were asking us ‘Hey, did y’all promise to get paid? And we said ‘Yeah, somebody told us that we’d get paid $100 if we come in,” Beagle said. “Everybody was just concerned about getting paid whatever they were promised.”

DTLA said in a statement it has “never directed, nor do we have any knowledge that anyone was ever paid, hired, or brought to the DTLA office, or was asked to memorize a script of any kind under the guise of filmmaking,”

“We are not filmmakers,” the firm said. “No one authorized on behalf of the firm has ever promised or implied movie extra work as a means of retaining clients.”

Beagle and Barker said they were called in together to a glass cubicle where a woman spent 15-20 minutes asking them questions about their story of abuse. Barker said she struggled to come up with details because “it was all made-up stuff.”

Beagle said he thought maybe the staffers in the law firm were also acting, pretending not to know this was “a fake thing.”

“Like, they were testing us all out to see if we knew how to act — just play the part,” Beagle said. “Like, this was a trial thing.”

The couple said they were befuddled at the interaction but figured they’d done enough to get their money; the receptionist told them to come back in a few hours to collect.

The firm said, in some circumstances, it provides “interest free loans to clients once they have retained our services.”

Beagle and Barker said they frittered away two hours at Pershing Square a few blocks away until around 4 p.m. It was only when they came back to the firm, they said, that it became clear there was no movie.

A man named Kevin paid them $100 each, and told them they were part of a massive settlement involving juvenile halls they’d never heard about until that afternoon. The man told them they could get $100 for each additional person they referred to go through the same process, Beagle said.

“We walked out thinking I don’t know how legit this is and we might even get f— in trouble for it,” Beagle said.

Like most sexual abuse lawsuits, the suit was filed using only plaintiffs’ initials. The Times reviewed paperwork that DTLA provided to Beagle and Barker, which they signed in order to become clients on April 21 and to opt into the L.A. County settlement on May 29.

Under the settlement, each plaintiff could be eligible for anywhere from $100,000 to $3 million. Retainer agreements for Beagle and Barker reviewed by The Times show DTLA would get 45% of their payout.

Beagle and Barker said they aren’t banking on getting any money from L.A. County. After all, they said, they grew up in Texas, more than a thousand miles away from the abuse-plagued facilities.

“We need it, but it’s not ours. It’s like finding a wallet,” Barker said. “Return it.”

A Times investigation published earlier this month found plaintiffs represented by Downtown LA Law Group who claimed they received cash from recruiters to sue L.A. County over sex abuse. Four now say they were told to make up the claims.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Among some survivors, there is a palpable fear that the fraud allegations will steamroll the settlement, overshadowing the fact that many county-run facilities were home to unchecked abuse and torpedoing their chance of receiving a life-changing sum.

The Times interviewed eight victims for this article represented by Slater Slater Schulman, ACTS LAW Firm, McNicholas & McNicholas, and Becker Law Group. Many said they were aghast at learning the worst years of their life may have become fodder for quick cash.

“It felt like a kick in the gut,” said Trinidad Pena, 52. “For somebody just to lie about it was just sickening.”

On Sept. 18, Pena said, she was eating a pancake breakfast at a homeless services center in Long Beach when she learned she had something in common with a woman sitting on the picnic bench next to her.

Both had filed lawsuits against L.A. County alleging sexual abuse at county-run facilities. Both of them were part of the county’s $4-billion settlement. But she was the only one, she believed, who had actually been abused.

The woman told her she’d been paid $20 to sue by a woman who hung around on the sidewalk outside the community center clutching a clipboard, she said.

The Times could not reach the recruiters allegedly responsible for paying plaintiffs for comment.

Trinidad Pena, who sued in 2022 over sex abuse, said she was jarred to find herself at breakfast with a woman who told her she’d been paid to sue the county.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Pena sued L.A. County in December 2022 over an alleged rape when she was 12 by a staff member at MacLaren Children’s Center, a shuttered youth shelter now infamous for predatory staff. No amount of cash is going to erase the scars from that, she says. But it would help.

Last month, Pena traded in her New Orleans shotgun apartment for the streets of Southern California, where she was raised. The move was, she said, a Hail Mary attempt to get medical treatment through the state’s public benefits for a cyst sprouting behind her right eye that made her vision wobble and her head crackle with pain.

She is currently living on $1,206 a month in and out of her van with a failing shunt in her head, which doctors implanted to treat her cyst. She eats mostly the nonperishable Trader Joe’s snacks she brought from Louisiana.

A six- or seven-figure settlement could help save her life, Pena said.

“I’m going to have myself a hell of a Charlie Sheen party and take a nosedive off a balcony at the Chateau Marmont if I do not get some sort of relief,” said Pena, who says she grew up in foster care near the legendary West Hollywood hotel.

Part of what has made the false claims so infuriating, victims say, is that L.A. County youth detention facilities were indeed home to horrific abuse decades ago.

Kizzie Jones, 47, said she’s on antidepressants as a result of a female probation officer who allegedly molested her twice a week and groomed her with bags of chips and bottles of conditioner.

Robert Williams, 41, says he has no friends — a near-total isolation he said traces back to repeated sexual assaults in the shower he suffered as a teen.

Mario Paz, 39, said a guard molested him under the guise of soothing his genitals with milk after he was pepper sprayed while naked. The abuse, he says, has left him traumatized to the point that he is unable to change his children’s Pampers.

All three of them filed lawsuits against the county alleging sexual abuse by county probation officers.

Mario Paz, 39, said his time at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall left him traumatized and damaged the relationship he has with his own children.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“For someone to capitalize on something that they never endured or never experienced, I think it’s a travesty,” said Cornelious Thompson, a 51-year-old community health worker, who sued the county in December 2022.

When he was around 13 at Los Padrinos, Thompson says he was put on psychiatric medication that knocked him out. He woke up in his unit sore with his pants hanging by his knees, bleeding. It took him years to tell anyone.

He said he recently lost his job with a contractor for the county’s health department due to budget cuts. The county had to slash spending, in part, to pay for the $4-billion settlement.

It was “bittersweet,” he says, losing his job because the county was finally paying for what he said he endured as a teenager.

Only now, a new fear has crept in as two more people say they made up claims: Will he still be believed?

Aspiration Partners made a splash when it entered the green investing space in 2013.

The Marina del Rey firm billed itself as a socially conscious online banking company, offering investments and focusing its finances on the climate crisis. It also generated and sold carbon credits meant to help offset greenhouse gas emissions.

Soon, it collected celebrity investors such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, Robert Downey Jr., and Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft chief executive, philanthropist and owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.

But 12 years later, things have turned sour.

Earlier this year, the co-founder and another top company official agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud charges and scheming to bilk investors using falsified documents. Aspiration went bankrupt.

And now, the company is at the center of a NBA investigation into whether a $28-million deal the firm cut with Clippers star Kawhi Leonard was designed to help the team circumvent the league’s salary cap.

The Clippers have strongly denied that, and said neither the team nor Ballmer played any role in Leonard’s deal and that there was no intention to violate any NBA rules. Leonard has also denied any wrongdoing.

In a statement, the Clippers said Ballmer and his family are “focused on sustainability” and built the Clippers’ home arena at the leading edge of environmental design. Aspiration was part of that effort, the statement said, and Ballmer was “duped on the investment and on some parts of this agreement, as were many other investors and employees.”

A review of hundreds of pages of court records offers a window into how the once high-flying green company fell amid illegal dealings and multiple federal criminal investigations.

A company’s rise and fall

Founded by Joseph Sanberg and Andrei Cherny, Aspiration Partners reportedly raised $110 million from venture capital funds in just its first few years of existence.

It came at a moment of rising concern about climate change, and Aspiration seemed to capitalize. Sizable deals rolled in, including a $315-million pact with Oaktree Capital Management and Ballmer.

The firm even partnered with rapper Drake in 2021, using its reforestation program to offset the artist’s estimated climate impact. The company at the time claimed its business partners and customers had funded the planting of 15 million trees over the course of a year.

In September 2021, the Clippers announced a deal with the company as the first “Founding Partner” for its state-of-the-art arena in Inglewood. The idea was fans would be able to offset their carbon impact when buying a ticket to watch the team. Aspiration even bid unsuccessfully for the naming rights to the venue, now known as Intuit Dome.

The partnership, the news release announcing it declared, “set a new standard for social responsibility in sports.”

But behind the cadre of celebrity sponsors and investors, court documents reveal trouble was brewing inside Aspiration.

In 2020, the company explored a potential $55-million loan from an investor fund in exchange for 10.3 million shares of stock, according to federal court filings. But the investor fund wanted a “put option” — a sort of safety net guaranteeing it would be able to sell its stock if Aspiration defaulted on the loan, according to federal complaints.

Sanberg, according to federal prosecutors, turned to Ibrahim Ameen AlHusseini, a venture capitalist and then-board member of Aspiration Partners.

According to a federal criminal complaint, Sanberg was aware AlHusseini didn’t have the funds to cover the “put option.” So he allegedly coordinated with AlHusseini to falsify financial records and inflate AlHusseini’s worth by tens of millions of dollars.

Federal prosecutors allege AlHusseini sent Sanberg a spreadsheet showing his investment portfolio from several years back and told Sanberg the spreadsheet was not accurate but a “hypothetical.”

Sanberg, according to the federal complaint filed against him, revised the spreadsheet to read as if it were from Dec. 31, 2019, and sent it to an investment advisor.

AlHusseini also used a graphic designer from Lebanon to falsify financial documents at least 24 times between April 2020 and February 2023, according to the federal complaint filed against Sanberg. The records sent to the financial advisor made it appear that AlHusseini’s investments and assets were worth more than $200 million, the records show.

But in reality, federal prosecutors allege his Bank of America account balance in September 2021 was $11,556.89. His Fidelity investment accounts, according to court records from federal prosecutors, totaled $2,963.63 at the time.

According to a federal complaint, Sanberg then refinanced the loaned $55 million, securing $145 million from another investment firm, again using a “put option” from AlHusseini. This time, AlHusseini promised to buy the shares for $65 million from that firm if Sanberg defaulted, according to the federal complaint.

AlHusseini did not have the funds to back that deal, federal prosecutors alleged in court papers. But he still banked $6.3 million for his role in securing it, the complaint alleged.

There were other signs the company was in trouble.

Federal prosecutors allege Sanberg moved money from his personal checking account between Aspiration and another one of his companies in March 2022, making it appear on paper as if new investments were coming in.

On Nov. 2, 2022, Sanberg defaulted on the loan, and AlHusseini agreed the following month to boost the put option value to $75 million.

Some contractors began to complain that they were not being paid, according to court filings. Lawsuits followed.

In July 2022, Cherny also notified the company he would step down as chief executive. The day after he and the company signed a separation agreement in October, Sanberg threatened to sue him, according to a letter from Sanberg’s attorneys sent to Cherny.

Cherny would later file suit against Aspiration Partners, alleging the company didn’t pay him the entirety of his severance package agreed to in October 2022, according to a complaint filed in federal court. The suit was settled out of court earlier this year.

Federal prosecutors filed charges against AlHusseini in October 2024. He later agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud, as well as to work with federal authorities in their investigation.

He is expected to appear in court for a sentencing hearing on Feb. 26, according to court filings.

Aspiration Partners filed for bankruptcy in March.

Sanberg originally entered a plea of not guilty to the charges, but in August he agreed to plead guilty to two felony counts of wire fraud, according to federal prosecutors.

Court filings show he is expected in court on Oct. 20 for a change of plea hearing.

An NBA star’s deal

Aspiration cut its deal with Leonard in 2022. Although players are allowed to have separate endorsement and other business deals, the NBA probe is trying to determine whether the Clippers participated in arranging the side deal beyond simply introducing Aspiration executives to Leonard.

The investigation follows information detailed in the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast, which reported that Leonard’s deal amounted to a no-work contract meant to circumvent the NBA’s salary cap rules.

The salary cap limits how much teams can spend on player payroll. It’s meant to ensure talent parity by preventing the league’s wealthiest teams from outspending smaller markets to acquire the best players.

Circumventing the cap by paying a player outside of his contract is strictly prohibited and can be severely punished.

Cherny, in a statement posted on X, disputed that the agreement with Leonard required no work from the basketball star.

“The contract contained three pages of extensive obligations that Leonard had to perform,” Cherny wrote in the Sept. 12 post. “And the contract clearly said that if Leonard did not meet those obligations, Aspiration could terminate the contract.”

In the statement, Cherny said he does not remember any conversations about the NBA’s salary cap when the contract between Leonard and Aspiration was signed.

“There were numerous internal conversations about the various things Aspiration was planning to do with Leonard once the 2022-23 season began, including emails from the marketing team about their plans,” he said.

Cherny declined to be interviewed for this article.

It was Aspiration’s collapse that shed light on the Leonard deal. According to bankruptcy filings, Leonard’s private company, KL2 Aspire, is listed as one of the company’s biggest creditors — being owed $7 million.

The Clippers are, by far, the biggest creditor listed for the company, with more than $30 million in outstanding debt.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Clippers said the team terminated its relationship with Aspiration during the 2022-23 season, when the company defaulted on the agreement.

Ballmer has said he was duped by Aspiration, and insisted the Clippers followed all NBA rules. He also said he welcomed the investigation.

The Clippers signed Leonard to a four-year, $176-million contract in August 2021. In an interview with ESPN last month, Ballmer said that the sponsorship deal with Aspiration was completed in September 2021 and that the Clippers introduced Leonard to Aspiration two months later.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Clippers said both the team and Ballmer were unaware of Aspiration’s suspicious dealings.

“Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Ballmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co-founder until after the government instituted its investigation,” the statement read. “The team and Mr. Ballmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can.”

Ubiquitous and almost uniformly dull, the year of dispiriting political advertising seems like it just won’t end. It’s not just voters who get tired of what’s turning up on TV.

A firm that tracks campaign ads finds “a painful proportion of them are all the same” — but plucks out five ads that is says are exceptions to the dull norm. That’s five offbeat, attention-grabbing ads that Kantar Media CMAG selected out of more than 6,000 that have aired this year — from local races all the way up to the scrum for the White House.

“These ads stand out because they’re unusually creative, personal or authentic,” said an article by Kantar Vice President Elizabeth Wilner for Ad Age.

That doesn’t mean they are particularly uplifting or nice. Just memorable. Among the ads singled out by Wilner:

–Rep. Allen West’s spot, comparing his preparations to deploy to Iraq in 2003 to the activities about that time of his Democratic opponent, who got arrested in a bar brawl. Even Democratic activists who loathed the content of the ad said it helped the Florida GOP lawmaker open up a lead over his opponent, Patrick Murphy.

–South Dakota U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem let her grandmother do the talking to describe the congresswoman’s position on Medicare and President Obama’s healthcare law. The result was a lot more engaging than it might sound.

–Alaska state Sen. Bettye Davis described her recipe for politics by mixing up a pot of gumbo like they do in her native Louisiana.

–U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, the Missouri Democrat, doesn’t want voters in that state to forget how her opponent, Rep. Todd Akin, talked about women’s bodies being able to somehow ward off pregnancy after “legitimate rape.” Her ad features an antiabortion Republican “and rape survivor” saying that Akin’s backward views and the possible “criminalizing” of abortion had her turning to McCaskill.

–An ad from conservative advocacy group Crossroads GPS went after Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio by mimicking the DirecTV ads—the ones that show consumers falling into dire straits because of their allegiance to cable TV. (“Don’t reenact scenes from ‘Platoon’ with Charlie Sheen.”) The spot captures some of the glow of the amusing DirectTV campaign.

[email protected]

Twitter: @latimesrainey

Oct. 3 (UPI) — The Des Moines Public Schools plans to file a lawsuit against a consulting firm that recommended former superintendent Ian Roberts, who was detained by immigration officials.

JG Consulting is the superintendent search firm that helped the district find and vet potential candidates. The board paid $41,000 to JG Consulting.

The district said in a news release it claims breach of contract for failing to properly vet Roberts “and referred Roberts for consideration even though he could not lawfully hold the position.” It also claims negligence for presenting Roberts “as a suitable and viable candidate when he was not.”

The Des Moines Register’s own investigation found Roberts did not earn a doctorate from Morgan State, which he claimed. He also claimed he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and MIT had no record of his enrollment. He claimed he was awarded the Washington, D.C., “Principal of the Year” from George Washington University, which doesn’t exist.

JG Consulting CEO James Guerra wrote in a statement this week that another company, Baker-Eubanks, conducted a “comprehensive background review” of Roberts, the Des Moines Register reported.

“All required employment procedures were completed by DMPS prior to his appointment,” Guerra wrote. “As always, the authority to hire and oversee the Superintendent rests solely with the school board.”

Roberts was born in Guyana and came to the United States for college in 1999. He claimed he went on to get a Ph.D. and became a teacher and school administrator. He said he has worked in education for 20 years and had jobs in Maryland, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

He was arrested on Sept. 26 “in possession of a loaded handgun, $3,000 in cash and a fixed blade hunting knife,” an ICE press release said. It said when his car was approached by officers, he sped away. “Roberts has existing weapon possession charges from Feb. 5, 2020. Roberts entered the United States in 1999 on a student visa and was given a final order of removal by an immigration judge in May of 2024.”

The district is requesting a jury trial with damages for reputational harm, superintendent pay and costs related to additional hiring processes, The Register reported.

Roberts is now in the Polk County Jail on a U.S. Marshals hold.

Oct. 2 (UPI) — Officials for San Francisco-based Perplexity AI on Thursday announced the tech startup’s Comet browser that is powered by artificial intelligence is free to download and available globally.

Perplexity initially launched the Comet browser in July for its Perplexity Max subscribers and created a waitlist for others, which now includes millions of potential users, according to CNBC.

The browser features a “sidecar assistant” that helps users to more effectively browse the World Wide Web and can summarize and explain content on particular web pages, TechCrunch reported.

Paid Max subscribers also can access a “background assistant “that helps Comet users to multitask while online.”

Additional Comet browser tools for free users include Discover, which aggregates news and content for individual users, and Shopping, which helps with price comparisons for online shoppers.

Spaces is another Comet tool and helps to organize projects and manage their progress, and a Finance tool assists with budgeting, tracking spending and staying abreast of investments.

A Sports tool offers updates schedules, scores and sports news, while a Travel tool provides information on potential destinations, travel and accommodation costs.

Those who continue to subscribe to Perplexity Max can access AI models and use an email assistant that helps to draft and respond to emails and keep inboxes organized.

The Comet browser competes directly with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others that have launched AI-driven web browsers and comes after Perplexity officials tried to buy Google.

The tech firm in August made a $34.5 billion offer to buy Google’s Chrome browser, which Google first launched in 2008.

Perplexity was valued at $18 billion at the time, but company officials said they had financial backing from others when making the unsolicited offer that Google declined.

Perplexity made the offer after the Justice Department encouraged Google to sell its Chrome browser after a federal antitrust lawsuit concluded that tech firm has monopolized online search and text advertising.

SEOUL, Oct. 2 (UPI) — The share price of Naver surged some 10% over the past week after reports that the leading internet company of South Korea may merge with Dunamu, a major player in the country’s cryptocurrency industry.

Naver’s affiliate, Naver Financial, is reportedly in talks with Dunamu, which operates the world’s No. 4 crypto exchange Upbit, for a stock-for-stock merger. If finalized, Dunamu would become one of Naver’s subsidiaries.

Both companies confirmed Thursday that such negotiations were underway, but they declined to provide details.

“Beyond discussions on stablecoins and an unlisted stock trading platform, Dunamu and Naver Pay are exploring a range of additional collaborations. No further details or specific agreements have been finalized at this time,” Dunamu’s chief spokesman Juan Kim told UPI.

Naver Pay, the digital payments service of Naver Financial, boasts a customer base of more than 30 million. Naver holds about 70% of the firm, with Mirae Asset Group holding the remaining 30%. Dunamu remains privately held, with its founding Chairman Song Chi-hyung having a 25.5% stake.

Even if a deal is reached, it would require approval from the shareholders of both sides. At least two-thirds of participants at each company’s shareholder meeting must vote in favor.

Market sentiment suggests that approval is likely, in consideration of the recent sharp rise in Naver’s share price on the Seoul bourse. That of Dunamu has also soared in the over-the-counter trading.

Creating new digital finance ecosystems

Observers point out that amalgamation between Naver Financial and Dunamu could reshape South Korea’s financial landscape, enabling them to compete more effectively with large-sized global rivals.

One major synergy could come from the introduction of a stablecoin, a cryptocurrency pegged to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar. This compares to most other cryptocurrencies, which fluctuate greatly in value.

Daishin Securities analyst Lee Ji-eun said in a recent report that the combined entity could link its stablecoin to Naver Pay, boosting mainstream adoption.

“In the long term, they could seek to dominate the Korean currency-based stablecoin market and provide services such as investment returns and lending by utilizing deposits as collateral,” she said.

Mirae Asset Securities projects that such a business model would provide roughly $210 million in annual revenue by the end of this decade.

Sogang University Professor Yoon Seok-bin described the potential deal as “the marriage of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 businesses.” The former represents interactive, platform-based services, while the latter focuses on decentralized technologies.

“Both Naver Financial and Dunamu are already profitable. Together, I think they can bring about various new services such as a stablecoin and an all-in-one mobile application called a ‘super app,'” Yoon said in a phone interview.

“In addition, Naver Financial will be able to help Dunamu’s Upbit go abroad. Upbit is the primary crypto exchange in the country, but has yet to establish a notable global footprint. Based on Dunamu’s strong cash flow, Naver Financial will also have a chance to challenge bigger competitors, including PayPal and Stripe,” he added.

Naver Financial recorded $1.18 billion in sales last year for an operating profit of $74 million. Dunamu logged $1.24 billion in revenue, with an operating income of $847 million. Dunamu’s operating margin amounted to 68.5%.

Some watchers say that lucrative Dunamu opted to become a Naver affiliate to achieve its long-standing goal of going public in the United States based on the global brand power of Naver, which listed its U.S. unit Webtoon Entertainment on Nasdaq last year.

Expecting the merger will be structured as an equity swap, Eugene Investment & Securities analyst Jo Tae-na said that Dunamu chairman Song would be the largest shareholder of the new company.

Her rationale: Because the value of Dunamu is about three times bigger than that of Naver Financial, such an outcome is plausible through an equity swap.

“Following the merger, a global listing is expected to lead to at least 1.5 to 2 times higher valuation compared to Dunamu’s standalone listing,” she said in a report. “If the new company goes public, its corporate value could reach $29 billion to $36 billion.”

In the latest salvo between Hollywood and artificial intelligence companies, tech start-up Character.AI has removed many Disney characters from its chatbot platform after the Burbank entertainment giant sent the firm a cease-and-desist letter, alleging copyright infringement.

Chatbots on the Character.AI platform impersonated well-known Disney characters such as Elsa, Moana, Peter Parker and Darth Vader and generated replies that simulated the “essence, goodwill, and look and feel of each character” and also incorporated their backstories, according to a letter dated Sept. 18 from a law firm representing Disney.

“These actions mislead and confuse consumers, including vulnerable young people, to believe that they are interacting with Disney’s characters, and to falsely believe that Disney has licensed these characters to, and endorsed their use by, Character.ai,” the letter said. “In fact, Character.ai is freeriding off the goodwill of Disney’s famous marks and brands, and blatantly infringing Disney’s copyrights.”

Disney also raised concerns about reports that chatbots have engaged users in inappropriate conversations.

A spokesperson for the Menlo Park-based startup said in an email that Character.AI responds “swiftly” to rights holders’ requests to remove content and noted that all of the characters on the service are generated by users.

On Tuesday afternoon, a few Disney characters remained on the platform, including Elsa from the hit animated film “Frozen.” The spokesperson said removing the characters is a process.

“We want to partner with the industry and rightsholders to empower them to bring their characters to our platform,” the spokesperson said. “Our goal is to give IP owners the tools to create controlled, engaging and revenue-generating experiences from deep fandom for their characters and stories, expanding their reach using our new, interactive format.”

Friction between Hollywood studios and AI firms has been growing.

In June, Disney and Comcast’s Universal Pictures sued AI company Midjourney, alleging that its image generator infringed on its copyrighted characters from franchises such as “Star Wars” and “Despicable Me.”

Warner Bros. Discovery joined the legal fight earlier this month, alleging that Midjourney’s software was producing rip-offs of characters such as Scooby-Doo and Superman.

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The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a fivefold increase to its contract with a law firm that drew heated criticism for the invoices it submitted in a high-stakes homelessness case.

Three months ago, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher billed the city $1.8 million for two weeks of legal work, with 15 of its attorneys billing nearly $1,300 per hour. By Aug. 8, the cost of the firm’s work had jumped to $3.2 million.

The price tag infuriated some on the council, who pointed out that they had approved a three-year contract capped at $900,000 — and specifically had asked for regular updates on the case.

Despite those concerns, the council voted 10-3 Wednesday to increase the firm’s contract to nearly $5 million for the current fiscal year, which ends in June 2026. Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky supported the move, saying Gibson Dunn’s work has been “essential to protecting the city’s interests.”

“At the same time, we put new oversight in place to ensure any additional funding requests come back to council before more money is allocated,” said Yaroslavsky, who heads the council’s budget committee.

Councilmembers Tim McOsker, Adrin Nazarian and Nithya Raman voted against the contract increase.

McOsker, who also sits on the budget committee, said he was not satisfied with Gibson Dunn’s effort to scale back the amount it is charging the city. After the council asked for the cost to be reduced, the firm shaved $210,000 off of the bill, he said.

“I think Gibson should have given up more, and should have been pressed to give up more,” McOsker said after the vote.

A Gibson Dunn attorney who heads up the team that represents the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, an aide to City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto welcomed the council’s vote.

“We are pleased that the City Council recognizes and appreciates the strong legal representation that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher has provided and continues to provide to the city,” said Karen Richardson, a spokesperson for Feldstein Soto, in a statement.

Gibson Dunn was retained by the city in mid-May, one week before a major hearing in the case filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a nonprofit group that has been at odds with the city over its handling of the homelessness crisis since 2020.

The city reached a settlement with the L.A. Alliance in 2022, agreeing to create 12,915 homeless shelter beds or other housing opportunities. Since then, the L.A. Alliance has repeatedly accused the city of failing to comply with the terms of the settlement agreement.

In May, a federal judge overseeing the settlement called a seven-day hearing to determine whether he should take authority over the city’s homelessness programs from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council, and hand them over to a third party. Alliance lawyers said during those proceedings that they wanted to call Bass and two council members to testify.

In the run-up to that hearing, the city hired Gibson Dunn, a powerhouse law firm that secured a landmark Supreme Court ruling that upheld laws prohibiting homeless people from camping in public spaces.

Feldstein Soto has praised Gibson Dunn’s work in the L.A. Alliance case, saying the firm helped the city retain control over its homelessness programs, while also keeping Bass and the two council members off the stand. She commended the firm for getting up to speed on the settlement, mastering a complex set of policy matters within a week.

Feldstein Soto initially hoped to increase the size of the Gibson Dunn contract to nearly $6 million through 2027 — only to be rebuffed by council members unhappy with the billing situation. On Wednesday, at the recommendation of the council’s budget committee, the council signed off on nearly $5 million over one year.

A portion of that money will likely go toward the filing of an appeal of a federal judge’s order in the LA Alliance case, Feldstein Soto said in a memo.

Faced with lingering criticism from council members, Feldstein Soto agreed to help with the cost of the Gibson Dunn contract, committing $1 million from her office’s budget. The council also tapped $4 million from the city’s “unappropriated balance,” an account for funds that have not yet been allocated.

By transferring the money to the Gibson Dunn contract, the council depleted much of the funding that would have gone to outside law firms over the current budget year, said McOsker, who called the move “bad fiscal management.”

Raman, who heads the council’s homelessness committee, said her dissenting vote wasn’t about the price of the services charged by Gibson Dunn, but rather the fact that so much was spent without council approval.

“As someone who is watching that money very closely, I was frustrated,” she said. “So my ‘no’ vote was based on that frustration.”

Walt Disney Co., Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday sued a Chinese artificial intelligence firm called MiniMax for copyright infringement, alleging its AI service generates iconic characters including Darth Vader, the Minions and Wonder Woman without the studios’ permission.

“MiniMax’s bootlegging business model and defiance of U.S. copyright law are not only an attack on Plaintiffs and the hard-working creative community that brings the magic of movies to life, but are also a broader threat to the American motion picture industry,” the companies said in their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

The entertainment companies requested that MiniMax be restrained from further infringement. They are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, as well as attorney fees and costs.

This is the latest round of copyright lawsuits that major studios have brought against AI companies over intellectual property concerns. In June, Disney and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney for copyright infringement. Earlier this month, Warner Bros. Discovery also sued Midjourney.

Shanghai-based MiniMax has a service called Hailuo AI, which is marketed as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket” and used characters including the Joker and Groot in its ads without the studios’ permission, the studios’ lawsuit said. Users can type in a text prompt requesting “Star Wars’” iconic character Yoda or DC Comics’ Superman, and Hailuo AI can pull up high quality and downloadable images or video of the character, according to the document.

“MiniMax completely disregards U.S. copyright law and treats Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters like its own,” the lawsuit said. “MiniMax’s copyright infringement is willful and brazen.”

“Given the rapid advancement in technology in the AI video generation field … it is only a matter of time until Hailuo AI can generate unauthorized, infringing videos featuring Plaintiffs’ copyrighted characters that are substantially longer, and even eventually the same duration as a movie or television program,” the lawsuit said.

MiniMax did not immediately return a request for comment.

Hollywood is grappling with significant challenges, including the threat of AI, as companies consolidate and reduce their expenses as production costs rise. Many actors and writers, still recovering from strikes that took place in 2023, are scrambling to find jobs. Some believe the growth of AI has threatened their livelihoods as tech tools can replicate iconic characters with text prompts.

While some studios have sued AI companies, others are looking for ways to partner with them. For example, Lionsgate has partnered with AI startup Runway to help with behind the scenes processes such as storyboarding.

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, was hit with a personal judgment of $4.85 million Monday for his failure to pay a debt to a former colleague at his longtime Newport Beach firm.

Less than an hour after his defeat in the Los Angeles lawsuit, Avenatti suffered another setback at a trial in Orange County: The Irvine Co. won a court order evicting him and his staff from their offices because the firm, Eagan Avenatti, skipped the last four months of rent.

The twin blows came as Avenatti was heading to New Hampshire for his third visit to the state that kicks off the 2020 presidential primaries. The celebrity lawyer is exploring a run for the Democratic nomination. His troubled financial history could emerge as a significant campaign issue if he joins the race.

The personal judgment against Avenatti by Judge Dennis J. Landin in Superior Court in Los Angeles was his latest in a series of courtroom losses in a protracted dispute with Jason Frank, the former colleague.

Eagan Avenatti emerged from federal bankruptcy protection in March after Avenatti promised that it would pay millions of dollars to Frank and other creditors, including the Internal Revenue Service. It has defaulted on nearly every payment that was due.

No one has pursued Avenatti more relentlessly than Frank, who has been fighting in federal court to collect on a $10-million judgment that he won against the firm in May.

“My client has had an awful lot of money owed to him for a lengthy period of time,” said Frank’s attorney, Eric George, “and it has been delayed through one tactic or another. Today, finally, the right thing happened.”

Avenatti has been the managing partner of Eagan Avenatti since its founding in 2007.

He recently told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge that his other firm, Avenatti & Associates, wholly owned by Avenatti, had acquired 100% of the equity in Eagan Avenatti, buying out his minority partner, Michael Eagan of San Francisco.

But Avenatti told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that he hadn’t owned Eagan Avenatti for months. He refused to identify the new owner.

“Any judgment issued against me will be deducted from the over $12 million that Jason Frank owes me and my law firm Avenatti & Associates as a result of his fraud,” Avenatti said by email.

No court has found Frank engaged in fraud, and Avenatti is not pursuing any court case alleging that he did. When Frank and two others left Eagan Avenatti to form their own firm, some clients went with them, angering Avenatti.

Frank alleges that Eagan Avenatti cheated him out of millions of dollars in compensation.

As part of its bankruptcy settlement, Eagan Avenatti agreed to pay Frank $4.85 million. Avenatti guaranteed that if the firm missed the deadlines for making the payment, which it did, he would personally be required to pay Frank.

To enforce the personal guarantee, Frank sued Avenatti, and on Monday he won the case.

Daniels, the adult film star whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is represented by Avenatti & Associates, which operates out of the same offices as Eagan Avenatti and uses the same attorneys. Daniels is trying to void a nondisclosure agreement that bars her from discussing her alleged sexual affair in 2006 with Donald Trump.

Last week, a judge dismissed the defamation suit that Avenatti filed on Daniels’ behalf against Trump, finding the president was exercising his right to free speech when he attacked her credibility on Twitter.

Avenatti had another reversal last month at the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to interview an Avenatti client, Julie Swetnick, who alleged that Kavanaugh attended a 1982 party where where she said she was gang-raped.

In the Santa Ana trial, 520 Newport Center Drive LLC, an arm of the Irvine Co., alleged that Eagan Avenatti missed $213,254 in rent payments over the last four months for its ocean-view suite on the 14th floor of an office building at Fashion Island.

Nobody from Eagan Avenatti showed up for the trial.

Superior Court Judge Robert J. Moss ordered the firm to vacate the premises and pay the landlord the full amount of overdue rent. He also canceled the remaining three months of the lease. If the firm fails to move out, it could take a few weeks for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to enforce the eviction.

In court papers filed by Avenatti, the firm claimed it deducted the cost of needed repairs from its rent payments but did not receive proper credit.

The Irvine Co. denied that the offices needed any serious repairs. And the lease, signed by Avenatti, says the tenant “understands that it shall not make repairs at landlord’s expense or by rental offset.”

At the short morning trial, Mark A. Kompa, an Irvine Co. attorney, called just three witnesses. He asked one of them, Irvine Co. assistant manager Abigail Yocam, what happened to the last rent payments received from Eagan Avenatti in July.

She testified: “The checks bounced.”

[email protected]

Twitter: @finneganLAT

UPDATES:

3:55 p.m.: The article was updated with the testimony of Irvine Co.’s Abigail Yocam and background on Stormy Daniels and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

1:45 p.m.: The article was updated with additional details on the court cases.

11:50 a.m.: The article was updated with background on Michael Avenatti exploring a run for president and the Stormy Daniels litigation against President Trump.

11:15 a.m.: The article was updated with a comment from Michael Avenatti, background on Eagan Avenatti and the eviction judgment.

The article was originally published at 10:15 a.m.

RENAULT’S beloved Clio has been reinvented for its sixth generation – and drivers in France have been left “dumbstruck” by its surprising new look. 

The new Renault Clio 6, unveiled this week in Munich, has sparked outrage in France, with some claiming the car is unrecognisable.

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One critic said it looked like Ford, another likened it to a Nissan and a third claimed it assembled a seat. 

Several compared it to a Mazda, while others thought they spotted hints of Alfa Romeo or Peugeot. 

Yet they all seemed to agree the Clio 6 does not look like a Renault and in a country with a 126-year attachment to the brand, the absence of its typical features has gone down badly. 

“The discovery of this new Renault has left us dumbstruck,” said Caradisac, the car website. 

“Unrecognisable,” said Capital, the financial magazine. “You can detect a bit of Peugeot, a pinch of Ford, a touch of Mazda and a hint of Seat.” It warned the design “risks disappointing” car-loving readers.

“You don’t change a winning team,” said Les Echos, the financial daily. “However, that is what Renault has done with its new Clio.”

Social media erupted with debate, especially over comparisons to Mazda. One Mazda owner joked: “The new Renault 6 does remind me … of a Mazda 3. This can’t be a bad thing, right?”

The row highlights Renault’s cultural and economic significance in France.

The Clio may not match the legendary Renault 4L or Citroën 2CV, but it has been a modern industrial success story and a familiar sight on French roads.

Over 17 million Clios have been sold since its 1989 launch. 

It was Europe’s second best-selling car last year, behind the Dacia Sandero, another Renault group vehicle, and the top-selling model in France in the first half of 2025. 

“It’s an old love story,” said Challenges, the financial website.

The Clio has even inspired clubs, online forums, and, controversially, a survey in 2023 found 25% of respondents had had sex in their car at least once – the Clio topping the list ahead of the BMW 3 and Audi A4.

The new Clio 6 advertising slogan, “Love redesigned,” hints at the “more spacious and generous” interior Capital mentioned.

Politics and economics also loom large. Renault is France’s only remaining national carmaker, with the state holding 15% to ward off takeover attempts. 

Meanwhile, rivals Peugeot and Citroën are now part of Stellantis, headquartered in the Netherlands.

Conservative voices have criticised Renault’s decision to make the Clio 6 in Turkey, while environmentalists are unimpressed by the hybrid, rather than fully electric, engine option.

Renault insists the car is aimed at a fast-changing market. CEO François Provost said his aim was to rival Chinese carmakers, whom he described as “the best.”

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Warner Bros. Discovery has joined a key copyright infringement case that could test the legal bounds of using artificial intelligence to create digital replicas of well-known characters.

The company on Thursday filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against AI company Midjourney Inc., alleging its image generator produces blatant rip-offs of Warner’s well-known and copyright-protected characters, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Scooby-Doo.

With the suit, Warner Bros. Discovery joins a legal fight brought in June by Walt Disney Co. and Comcast’s Universal Pictures. The Disney and Universal lawsuit marked the first salvo by major studios to elevate the legal struggle over AI-enabled intellectual property, calling it content theft.

The addition of Warner Bros. Discovery could boost Disney’s and Universal’s case. The three entertainment industry leaders control much of the most valuable intellectual property in Hollywood.

Disney’s stable includes Star Wars, Woody the Cowboy, Winnie the Pooh, the Simpsons and Disney princesses. Universal boasts such beasts as the Hulk, Shrek and the Minions.

Warner Bros. controls characters from DC Comics , Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera .

It sued on behalf of Warner Bros. , DC Comics, Turner Entertainment Co., Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc., and the Cartoon Network. The company, which asked for a jury trial, is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction.

The companies allege the four-year-old San Francisco firm Midjourney, which has millions of paid subscribers, built its business off decades of hard work by Hollywood artists, writers and studios.

Midjourney, on its website, describes itself as “an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.” Midjourney offers its subscribers use of an image generator to create high-resolution digital depictions, including famous characters like Batman.

Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney and Universal allege that Midjourney trained its generative AI programs by using their copyrighted works. They contend that Midjourney-enabled creations are almost identical to their original copyrighted cartoons. Warner Bros.’ lawsuit included side-by-side renderings of its characters and Midjourney’s reproductions to illustrate the identical details, such as the color of Scooby-Doo’s collar and fur.

Midjourney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The heart of what we do is develop stories and characters to entertain our audiences, bringing to life the vision and passion of our creative partners,” Warner Bros. Discovery said in a statement. “Midjourney is blatantly and purposefully infringing copyrighted works, and we filed this suit to protect our content, our partners, and our investments.”

Warner Bros. Discovery pointed to the value of its franchises, including its DC Comics movies. Films featuring the DC Extended Universe, which were released from 2018 through 2023, generated more than $7 billion in global ticket sales. Each film earned an average of $479 million, the lawsuit said.

“Only Warner Bros. Discovery has the right under U.S. Copyright law to build a business around reproducing, preparing derivative works, distributing, publicly displaying, and performing images and videos featuring its copyrighted characters,” the company said in its lawsuit.

Such exclusive rights and protections allow Warner Bros. Discovery and other studios to make massive investments in content, the lawsuit said, adding: “That is the cornerstone of the U.S. Copyright Act.”

Hollywood performers and writers in recent years have voiced grave concerns about the rapid development of generative AI. The technology is expected to revolutionize the film industry and lead to fewer jobs.

Curbs on the use of generative AI became a sticking point in the historic 2023 strikes by actors and writers.

Disney and Universal applauded Warner Bros. for joining their legal battle.

“Disney is committed to protecting our creators and innovators, and we’re pleased to be joined by Warner Bros. Discovery in the fight against Midjourney’s blatant copyright infringement,” Disney said in a statement.