What's Going on With Diplo? A Look at the Disturbing Allegations Against the DJ

DJ and record producer Diplo (real name: Thomas Wesley Pentz) is no stranger to controversy regarding his rumored relationships with younger women.

Below, we take a look at some of the allegations against the Major Lazer member, including the legal battles with influencer Shelly Auguste and an unidentified woman going by Jane Doe. Plus we'll address the rumors involving him and TikTok star Quenlin Blackwell.

In October 2020, influencer Shelly Auguste sued Diplo for sexual battery, fraud, and defamation. Amid her claims that Diplo had groomed her as a teen, the DJ went on to later sue Auguste back for stalking, defamation, and assault. In August 2023, amid their legal battle, Shelly was interviewed on Sloan Hooks's Let's Get Into It podcast, with the intention to share more of her story after being "silenced" for two years, as she claimed.

She said she'd started talking to Diplo in 2014 and had lost her virginity to him in 2019 when he was 41 and she was 22, and that he'd given her chlamydia despite claiming he got "tested as much as a porn star." She also reiterated more claims from her lawsuit that he'd allegedly recorded her during sex without her consent and had sent her recordings of himself having sex with others.

In June 2021, TMZ obtained legal documents that stated Auguste was suing Diplo for "sexual battery, assault, defamation, infliction of emotional distress, and fraud." The civil trial is scheduled for January 2025, per Vanity Fair.

Around the time Auguste sued Diplo the first time, another upsetting story began making its round on social media. This time it was about social media comic Quenlin Blackwell and her living situation.

In October 2020, then-19-year-old TikTok star Quenlin Blackwell revealed that she was currently living with the then-41-year-old DJ, and fans seemed concerned about their age difference.

"I live with Diplo right now, and he fully supports my endeavors," she said in a statement at the time that would go viral. Citing their 22-year age difference, many were concerned that the two had begun a romantic relationship.

"I'm an adult," Quenlin said on Twitter at the time, slamming the rumors. "I'm not being groomed. Platonic relationships exist. I've been living here for over a year..... I'd rather break both of my legs and be forced to walk than pursue Diplo romantically and he'd rather choke."

After his name was trending during the weekend of Oct. 24, 2020, Diplo addressed the allegations. "OK so I rent one of my properties to @quenblackwell," he wrote on Twitter at the time, tagging the TikTok star. "Her social media is sarcastic and chaotic and I can see you can get a twisted idea but there is nothing but a friendship between us," the Grammy winner said.

"As a landlord I don't really consider age or race as a qualification," he added. "U just gotta pay security deposit. And don't poke holes in the walls or ruin my carpet."

When fans asked why he couldn't have just "bought her an apartment," the father-of-three responded: "I got my own kids to take care of and mortgages to pay."

A couple years later, however, in 2022, Quen made some comments that caused concern among fans. When asked about new music, she told her followers in a video post on social media (per Centennial World):

“This producer told me to come out here when I was 17, and I came out here when I was 18, and I didn’t know what I was coming out here for really. But then I started making music and then a whole bunch of producers were like, ‘wait, this is really good music’ so I stopped working on myself at all."

“I love my music,” she continued. “My music’s been a journal to me through all the bulls--t I’ve dealt with from someone older like, ‘wanting to help me’ but essentially just like, seeing a young creative ... and wanting to own them and wanting to have them a part of your crew.”

“So when I wake up out of the fog and haze from like, living over there and living with these producers and s--t, I like, have all this music,” she said, adding: “I’ve got release dates since 2020 and nothing has been released. It’s April of 2022, I’m 21 now, like, I want to release music, I just don’t know how to and I feel lost."

Though she didn't mention Diplo by name, some fans were reminded of the prior rumors about the two.

Vanity Fair reported that in June 2024, a woman calling herself Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against the music producer alleging he shared sexually graphic images and videos of the two of them, without her consent. Per the lawsuit, the two exchanged sexually explicit videos and pictures over Snapchat when Doe was 21 years old in April 2016. This allegedly went on for two months before they had sex with each other, a situation that lasted until October 2023.

Doe was told by a stranger in November 2023 that she had been sent these graphic images and videos in October 2018, and knew they were still being distributed as of the time she reached out. In the lawsuit, Doe clearly stated she never gave Diplo permission to share the sexual content, which is being considered revenge porn. On Nov. 7, 2023 she filed a police report which resulted in a warrant being issued for Diplo's arrest. He did not respond to a request for comment made by Vanity Fair.