MrBeast sues former employee accused of stealing company secrets, installing hidden cameras in office

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is suing a former employee, Leroy Nabors, for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract, according to a lawsuit filed April 4 in a North Carolina court. Among the allegations in the complaint, which Polygon has reviewed, Donaldson’s lawyers claim Nabors also installed hidden cameras “throughout Beast’s offices.”

Though Donaldson as MrBeast is the face of the brand, his company is expansive; he employs “roughly 350 people,” per the complaint. His immense popularity in creating viral YouTube videos has grown into a successful (and controversial) empire; he has a snack brand, a failed burger chain, and a reality TV show called Beast Games. Donaldson’s company made $473 million in revenue last year, according to Business Insider.

Nabors was one of those 350 employees, hired in 2023 as an IT contractor who “initially was responsible for working on Beast’s IT network, including working with the servers that housed post-production Beast content.” Nabors subcontracted his daughter’s company Vine Networks to help manage the IT network, according to the lawsuit. Later, in late 2023, lawyers say Nabors was moved to a “special projects” team in the company’s development department, which handles “content production,” “fundraising,” and “political advocacy.” He worked there, outside of IT, until he was fired on Oct. 1, 2024.

Due to the sensitive nature of his role — access to so much Beast Industries information in an IT role — Nabors was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which lawyers say he broke by downloading loads of company data in the time leading up to his firing. In a review of Nabors’ activity on company devices, Beast Industries says it found Nabors “downloaded more than one thousand Beast confidential files” — stuff like “highly confidential information about business strategy, financial information, capitalization tables, financing documents, individual employee personal information, and other MrBeast intellectual property,” per the complaint.

Lawyers suggest Nabors knew his termination was coming, and prepared as such. The company says that, when confronted, he denied intentionally downloading secret data, calling it a routine backup. He also had been syncing files to a personal DropBox account, according to the lawsuit, and still has access to “thousands of Beast’s most confidential files” via that account.

In the internal investigation after Nabors’ firing, “multiple hidden cameras” were found in the Beast Industries offices, according to the lawsuit. “No Beast employee recalls installing those cameras,” lawyers write. “Nabors, conversely, was well known among colleagues to surreptitiously record meetings.” The company’s representatives say they believe Nabors and his daughter’s company controlled access to the cameras.

Naturally, Donaldson and MrBeast Industries want to see and delete the information Nabors still has; the release of that information would reveal sensitive information about the million-dollar business and its employees. He’s looking for damages and for a permanent injunctive “ordering the return of all Beast information improperly in his possession.”

Polygon has reached out to Donaldson through his lawyer and has attempted to reach Nabors through a company in which he’s listed as an owner. Neither responded by the time publication.

Both sides of the case have a history with lawsuits; Nabors was sued in 2022 by Edu-Net, an IT contracting company that he’d founded, after he founded a competing company that “diverted millions of dollars in revenue and profits from Edu-Net.” Donaldson, too, has been sued before: In September 2023, five contestants from the Beast Games reality TV show filed a lawsuit citing “dangerous circumstances and conditions.” Several other lawsuits have been filed over the years in relation to his businesses, like Donaldson’s 2023 lawsuit against Virtual Dining Concepts in which he attempted to get out of a brand deal in which “disgusting,” “revolting,” and “inedible” hamburgers were sold under the MrBeast name.