Law&Crime Sidebar - Teen YouTube Idol’s ‘Momager’ Settles Lawsuit with 11 of Her Daughter’s Co-Stars

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Nearly a dozen of Piper Rockelle’s former co-stars on her popular YouTube channel filed a lawsuit against her mom, Tiffany Smith. The teens and pre-teens claim that Smith sexually harassed them, used their images without permission, and tanked their YouTube channels when they left the “Piper Squad.”  Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber sat down with Matthew Sarelson, attorney for the plaintiffs, to discuss some behind-the-scenes details. PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/lctakeover to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Guys, that was today's video. If you enjoyed it, please like, subscribe, like for my mom. The mom of a young YouTube star, who was also her manager and sometimes appeared in her videos will have to pay almost $2 million to other kids who appeared alongside her thanks to a lawsuit. We're getting the inside scoop on the recently settled case with the attorney for 11 plaintiffs, Matthew Sarlson. Welcome to Sidebar.

Presented by Law and Crime, I'm Jesse Weber. So 11 teenagers and preteens sued the mom of popular content creator Piper Raquel in 2022, claiming that Tiffany Smith not only sexually harassed and molested them, but didn't pay them for their participation in Piper's videos. Now, if you don't know who Piper Raquel is, join the club. You've got to be my age. I had no idea. Honestly, I'm not afraid to admit that.

But I did research. We looked into her and I can't believe I don't know who she is because she is a YouTube. mega star out in California, who's especially popular with the younger generation. And remember for a while there when a lot of kids were going viral for making their own slime? Well, apparently that's how Piper got her start. She first appeared in a video in 2016 when she was just nine years old, became a viral sensation basically overnight. She's now 17 years old. Her star has not dimmed. She has reportedly more than 12 million subscribers on YouTube. And of course, posts content on other social media platforms as well, like Instagram and TikTok.

She apparently also uses Brand Army, which our understanding is described as the safe for work version of OnlyFans. Subscribers can pay for access to behind the scenes videos and other exclusive content. Now, much of Piper's content when she was younger was intended for an audience of her peers and other kids, but it seems that as she's entered her teenage years, her content started getting more adult. In fact, many of her Instagram photos depict her in arguably more sexualized scenarios. So needless to say, over the years, Piper's fame has meant major money for her and her manager, her mom, Tiffany Smith. And yes, the now 43-year-old is described as

Piper's manager and producer for her YouTube channel. She was the first named defendant in a multi-million dollar lawsuit that legal guardians filed on behalf of 11 kids, all of whom had worked with Piper over the years, and it had been featured pretty heavily in her videos. The lawsuit also named Piper Raquel Inc. and Hunter Hill, according to the lawsuit, Hill, is often depicted on Piper's channel as being her brother, but he's actually Smith's 25-year-old live-in boyfriend. He's also the primary director, editor, cinematographer for Piper's channel. The 11 plaintiffs who were all at one point in time part of the Piper Squad sued on the basis of several claims, including violation of common law rights of publicity, unjust enrichment,

sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress. The group included children ranging from ages 10 to 16. And with the exception of just two, all the plaintiffs had their own separate channels that they were running and earning money from. And that's going to be important because I'll mention that in a minute. Now, the teens were originally seeking around $2 million each, so $22 million total. But now we have learned that the attorneys were able to work out a settlement of $1.85 million to be split amongst them. And I know I said this a lot, but look, it is our privilege to be able to bring you these kinds of stories. And I want to thank one of our great partners who helps make episodes

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and you'll get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on your first tank of gas. Hope you can check it out. So for this, I want to dive into the lawsuit and the result that were able to be negotiated. And with that, I want to bring in one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, Matthew Sarlson. Matthew, thanks so much for coming here on Sidebar. Really appreciate you taking the time. So how are your clients feeling now that this case is over, that this settlement is official? Well, thanks for having me.

Yes, so the clients are actually ecstatic about the situation. They wanted to put this behind them. They weren't really ever doing this for the money. The money was sort of secondary. But they told everyone their story, very believable. credible stories. They've moved on. They're ready to start the next part of their life. You know, they're late teenagers at this point. They've moved on. Why settle now and why settle for that amount? As I mentioned, if they were each seeking two million, you know, you're looking at

maybe $22 million. Someone can look at this and say, this seems like a low offer to settle on. Yeah. So the way settlements come about, a defendant has to make an offer, plaintiffs have to obviously accept the offer. There was some talk earlier in the case about this $22 million number, that was a pie in the sky number that was thrown out there. I'm not even sure how it ended up getting into the news or the press, but eventually it did make its way to the press. Why did the case settle for $1.85 million? That's a good question, and there's a couple of moving parts to how cases settle.

One of them is insurance, the allegations in this case, because these were intentional tort claims, battery claims, sexual sort claims, there's no insurance for this. So this is all out-of-pocket money. And frankly, a lot of the plaintiffs just wanted to get past where we were. They wanted to not have to deal with a trial. We had a trial day coming up in December. It was going to be an eight to ten-week trial. It's a very long time to put 11 kids in a courtroom with their moms and their doctors

and testify again and again about what occurred. So it basically was, look, this was never about the money. 1.85 being paid by Tiffany, by the mom, fine. Let's take the money. on. They're all just more concentrated on future events. I understand that. I get it. I do want to break down some of the specifics of the lawsuit. Sure. It's really interesting. So in the complaint, it says plaintiffs collective efforts and contributions to Piper's YouTube channel as members of the squad were almost exclusively to the benefit of defendants, while to the physical, emotional,

and financial detriment of plaintiffs. The complaint continues that plaintiffs were never compensated by defendants despite the fact that their contributions on Piper's YouTube channel generated significant revenue for defendants, oftentimes upwards of several hundred thousand dollars per month, excuse me. On the other hand, plaintiffs were usually charged several hundred dollars per month by defendant Mr. Hill for various editing and cinematography services provided to plaintiffs for use of the creative content on their own respective YouTube channel. So Matthew, what was their understanding about this relationship. Did they ever sign anything? So after we filed suit, Tiffany actually came forward and said, there's talent releases for all of these kids. And therefore,

they're allowed to be on our set. And that was a real issue for us. We had to deal with the fact that unbeknownst to us, the plaintiffs in this case, did in fact sign talent releases. There was a question about their enforceability. But the defendants did in fact say, hey, we actually had the right to do all of this. Here's the contract that authorized. it. Their understanding was that they were making videos together, that they were going to essentially cross-promote. You know, the way this works is, one kid might have a YouTube channel that has, let's say, a million followers. And someone else might have a YouTube channel that has, let's say, 5 million followers. Piper's at the top. She's 10 million plus. She's in dormance, right? She's the big person in this arena.

And what happens is someone will say, you're going to be on my channel, I'm going to be on your channel. In theory, we cross-promote, and our ratings all go up together. That's what everyone sort of understood would have happened and that they'd all be able to make money on it collectively. That's just not actually what happened. It was simply a piper marketing pitch, if you will. And when did they realize that something was wrong about this arrangement? So by a year before we filed suit, they all, so let me clarify, they were not all in cahoots together. They were not on set together. So they didn't really know that what was happening to them was happening to all the other kids. And of course, these kinds of things take time.

The moms actually started talking to each other. And they would sit. They'd go for coffee and they'd say, hey, what's going on? And eventually they all discovered that the same thing was happening to all of them. And that's when they quit and eventually they hired us. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. I wanted to ask you about Smith's defense because she did an interview with the Los Angeles Times in, I believe, December of 2022 and told them she never considered herself to be the plaintiff's. employer. She says that she later got a work permit to work with minors. And I thought that was

really interesting that she didn't consider herself liable or responsible. What was your take on that? Her interview at the LA Times was interesting to say the least. Whether she thinks she was their employer is not the test. The question is, are you in actuality the employer? I can say all I want. I'm not your employer. If it looks like an employment relationship, it is by definition and employment relationship. Her other allegations of her other denials, you know, you would expect her to deny everything, right? She's not going to say, yes, it's true.

I touched these kids, obviously. So we never expected her to come forward and say, yes, this happened, this happened, this happened. I know there's been some allegation that she obtained a work permit, but that didn't happen when my kids were there. So whatever she's been doing since, look, I'm glad she's fixing the problem

and she's restructuring how she does business. I can only tell you what happened when my kids were working there. And there was no work permit or anything of the sort. And it's interesting when you mention the work permit of the work because, you know, people sometimes look at the social media videos. They say, oh, what kind of job is this? But there is a lot of work that goes into this content. And actually in the complaint, you said collectively they spend thousands of hours of labor, nearly 800 collective appearances in Piper's 550 videos that were posted on this YouTube channel. And she had more than 8 million

subscribers on YouTube and that number has jumped to 12 million. So in a way, there's this idea of where these kids being exploited. There's another part of this lawsuit that I thought was really interesting. It goes after plaintiffs eventually left the squad, defendants conspired amongst each other to intentionally interfere and sabotage plaintiff's individual YouTube channels by driving subscribers and video views down. Now, Matthew, how did you allege that they did this? We uncovered, there's a certain number of ways you can access someone's YouTube channel. One of them is you have permission. And the defendants in this case, particularly Hunter, had certain credentials, login credentials, and things would happen to their accounts, making

accounts private, making accounts public, private accounts don't really get views and you can't really monetize, you can't do anything with a private account. So there were videos and accounts that were made private when they were supposed to be made public. Then we're also tagging. So when you make a video, you tag certain things so that it comes up in an algorithm. You have to have it, you have to have the document say, this is what it's about. So you put in certain search criteria and it'll come back and it'll be a positive hit and it'll show up on your feed, right? So if you remove those or you mess with those hashtags or you mess with those keywords,

it's going to alter your ability to find someone's account. And we had uncovered that these kinds of things that happened and none of my clients did it. did it. So somebody else must have made certain changes to their accounts. There were also very serious allegations that people sort of loyal, if that's the right word, loyal to Piper or in Piper's camp, were encouraging other people with large fan bases to stop either working with my kids or just untagging them, taking down their YouTube, taking down their YouTube videos that were with them, whatnot. And so basically, if you have a whole bunch of kids who have a lot of power saying, stop working with those people, that's what was going on.

Weren't they, there was also the allegation that they were embedding your client's videos on porn sites and that there were, maybe it was bots or it was virtual assistance from other countries like Indian, Russia, and Pakistan that were leaving derogatory comments on their videos. Can you expand upon those, those two points? Yes. So there's a way to increase your profile by having fake accounts. We call them bots. There's other kind of fake accounts that you can use. Well, the opposite is true, too. You could have bots that, for example, will flag content for violating the platform standard, right? So YouTube has certain community guidelines. Well, if YouTube operates under a three-strike rule, where if you're found to violate their community guidelines three times, you're demonetize. It happens to people all the time. It's had it's high. profile cases where this has happened. Well, you can create fake ones. You can have bots file these community guideline alerts, which eventually will impact the algorithm and when you can view someone's account. The point issue is a little bit both stranger and worse. If you put in

a number of my client's names or Piper's names, for that matter, and you do a Google search, at some point down to the page, you know, Google doesn't do page one, page two anymore. It's just a continuous call. But if you just continuously scroll down, at some point, relatively close to the top, you will have porn accounts that appear to be overseas accounts. We're not talking like Pornhub.

It appears to be overseas weird names that have images of my clients or links to my client's pages on YouTube or Instagram. That's very shocking and disturbing, to say the least. You were able to tie it back to the defendants today, or you try or allege that they did it. Did they deny it? Did they respond to those allegations? Yeah, they deny it. Their general attitude was this is something that is not unique to these particular plaintiffs.

That at some point, anyone who puts an image, if you or I put an image, for example, on the internet, at some point, it can be manipulated. and, you know, whoever's doing it is doing it unrelated to the defendants. That was their claim. I will tell you some of the most shocking allegations in this lawsuit was about the sexual harassment and molestation. And I want to go into that. So the filing reads during a filming session, Miss Smith, again, this is Piper's mom, was referring to another squad member when she told Sophia F, I wonder since he, this squad member has

freckles, whether he has a bunch of freckles on his penis. and plaintiffs would frequently hear Ms. Smith refer to another squad member's penis as Dwayne the Rock Hard Johnson. And then later on in the complaint, it says, during a thumbnail photo shoot for a YouTube video, Ms. Smith demanded that plaintiff Sophia F. take her clothes off and ultimately made it appear that Sophia F. was fully naked. Ms. Smith also frequently told the male plaintiffs to take their shirts off for photos and videos because sex sells. Ms. Smith would often boast the plaintiffs and others about being the madam of YouTube and a pimp of YouTube and that she makes kitty porn. And she's also accused of rubbing the thighs of the young girls and reportedly moving her hand closer to their private areas until it was slapped away. Then the complaint also says that on numerous occasions, Ms. Smith would verbally harass, yell, and curse the plaintiffs if she felt they were doing something wrong in the videos, which would oftentimes cause plaintiffs to break down and cry either on set.

or after they got home to their families. Matthew, this is really shocking allegations, disturbing claims. Has, again, going back to this, has Smith denied this? And how did you intend to prove that all of this happened at trial? These are actually the easiest claims to prove because all of my clients to a T have testified and would have testified if there was a trial that these things happened. The touching, the language, this was a sexually charged environment. You've seen these videos.

These are, they're not porn videos, but they're definitely sexualized videos for sure. So this is a sexually charged environment, all of these comments, comments about breast, penises, but comments about the men and women, the boys and girls, these are kids, boys and girls going through puberty, all of my clients have testified repeatedly about these kinds of allegations. And frankly, I don't think we even scratched the surface. I think it probably went even further because we were hearing. from other witnesses who were not my clients about really sexualized environments. Obviously, Tiffany denies all this and good for her, but ultimately we were very confident that the five of our clients who had sexual battery claims, they would have ultimately prevailed. Do you know if the authorities have gotten involved with this?

Every law enforcement agency you can think of has been contacted and has been in touch with our clients from Department of Child and Families to the FBI. what's actually happening behind the scenes you know they don't tell us so I don't I can't tell you what they're doing I do know that we have we and our clients have been in touch with state local and federal law enforcement gotcha I I understand wow now there's another part of this and it talks about the claims that Smith use the kids images and their likeness and the names without their permission and the complaint says that the names identified the personas of

these kids they have tremendous value that That value is worldwide. They've built up goodwill. They have rights. Can you explain that a little bit more to us? Sure. It's a little bit like copyright. If I have a name or a face that has some value and you use it without my permission for commercial reasons, you are taking my name, image, and you have to compensate me for that.

You can't use Tom Cruise's image to promote a product without his permission. And obviously, Tom Cruise would sue. Well, this is sort of no different. What made this really complicated was after we filed suit, Tiffany and her lawyers had presented talent releases for all of our clients, all but one of our clients, and said, no, no, we had full permission to do this. And so then we had to have a real big fight as to the enforceability and the scope of these particular talent releases. So those were the claims that we filed, but those were ultimately, candidly, probably were going to be the hardest to prove in light of the talent releases. And by the way, Smith filed back. She countersued for $30 million, accusing the mothers of these plaintiffs of trying to extort money by making what she said were false sexual abuse allegations.

She ended up abandoning that lawsuit. What was your reaction to that? I'm glad you're asking me that because this part of the story doesn't get the attention. It deserves. Tiffany Smith filed a completely frivolous lawsuit in Chicago, federal court. Why Chicago? No one knows. There's no connection to Chicago.

She filed suit against the mother. of my clients saying that they had engaged in a criminal conspiracy, which your viewers probably know is a RICO claim. She thought a RICO claim against my clients for $30 million. Well, first, we pointed out that there was no connection to Chicago. So if you even want to think about pursuing this, you need to have a transfer. And the judge in Chicago actually said, this is nonsense. I have no idea why this is in my courtroom. It got kicked to Los Angeles federal court. When it was refiled in Los Angeles federal court, I had a heart-to-heart with. the plaintiff's attorney in that case and said, this is frivolous, we're going to move for

sanctions, we're going to get this dismissed. That lawsuit was predicated on a text exchange that we believe was entirely fabricated by either Smith or someone working on her behalf or in connection with her. There is a fabricated text message that if you read it, suggest that my clients are doing something improper. The problem is it doesn't have a name or a timestamp. It's entirely unauthenticated and no one knows where this came from. And the only people it could have come from for reasons I could get into in depth is Tiffany Smith and her side. So that counterclaim, if you want to call it a counterclaim, that lawsuit in Chicago was a entirely fabricated frivolous RICO case predicated on fabricated evidence. They dismissed the case because we were

going to destroy them. Wow. I mean, that's such an interesting aspect of the story. And look, now that you've settled, a lot of this, these details will not come to light in the sense that they won't be put on a, they won't come into a courtroom, you won't hear the testimony. A lot of this evidence on this back and forth we won't see. I will, I wanted to ask you and end on this point. I can understand that a lot of the details of the settlement are probably private. Having said that, the law firm that is representing Smith says that she's denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement terms, that, you know, she's still in a what do you what's your takeaway from that well just to clarify the settlement is not confidential at all we intended the settlement to not be confidential because we wanted it to make it clear that my clients are free to talk about the case they're free to talk about what happened there's no confidentiality of any kind in fact it's a publicly filed document because it had to be approved by the kids that's how we know that's how you know the case settled for 1.85 million dollars so no aspect of it is confidential there's no NDA of any kind I know Tiffany's lawyers they're fine lawyers I

I got along with them just fine. I'm sure that they deny all wrongdoing. I'm sure in the contract, they continued to deny all wrongdoing. But in every settlement agreement, every settlement agreement you've ever seen, there's a statement that says we're denying all wrongdoing, and we're making this settlement purely for business decisions. So whether they did something wrong or not, you know, that's going to be in the eyes of the viewers,

people listening and understanding what happened. So, you know, I know they deny all wrongdoing, and I respect them for denying all wrongdoing, but we feel very confident where this case was headed if we had to go to trial. Wow, what a story. Matthew Salson, thanks so much for coming on. Appreciate it.

Congratulations on settling this case. And we will see the next chapter of where this goes. But thank you so much. Appreciate the time. Thank you, sir. All right, everybody. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us.

And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.