Daymond John Sues Former Business Partners, Claiming He Is Owed ‘At Least Tens Of Millions’ – AfroTech
A deal has gone sour for Daymond John, who has now sued his business partners.
According to The Independent, the entrepreneur and investor who appears on “Shark Tank” secured a deal at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to sell personal protective equipment (PPE) to state governments through his consulting venture, The Shark Group. At the time, PPE was in high demand.
John onboarded product-sourcing experts Lisa Kornman Avila and Rashmi Budhram to supply N95 masks, goggles, and isolation gowns to the California Department of General Services, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the State of Michigan, and others, per The Independent. John had been in business with the pair since 2014 through their design, development, and product management company, Buko LLC, according to the outlet.
Buko LLC was expected to obtain the PPE, and John received 20% of the total revenue and one-third of the net profits as a referral commission, according to The Independent. The deal was also described as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for Buko LLC.
On April 3, John filed a lawsuit suing the pair for allegedly running away with “at least tens of millions of dollars” in commissions, per the outlet.
The couple allegedly received and fulfilled multiple orders worth hundreds of millions of dollars, though John has yet to see his cut of the deal, per the complaint.
In one instance, The Independent reports that the State of California ordered 20 million Level 2 isolation gowns on April 17, 2020. The gowns were priced at $8.95 each. John was told by Kornman and Budhram that he would receive his referral fee “as soon as funds were received,” per the outlet.
A few weeks later, the state of California placed another order for 100 million isolation gowns, which were delivered in eight weeks, leading to payments totaling $133.4 million and $12.9 million, the outlet reports.
“To date, defendants have refused to pay any money to Shark, despite securing multiple orders worth hundreds of millions of dollars from [the California Department of General Services] and other entities due to Shark’s efforts,” the complaint read, per The Independent.
Buko LLC has been restructured several times and is now named 5 Time Zones LLC, which the complaint frames as an effort to conceal earnings from John and position Kornman and Budhram to be “judgment-proof.”
The pair has about three weeks to respond to the complaint, according to The Independent.
