Ex-NFL star claims ‘racist’ CEO urged him to sleep with co-workers, lawsuit claims
Everyrealm CEO Janine Yorio reportedly threatened to “trade” Teyo Johnson, a former Oakland Raiders tight end who played football at Stanford University.
A former NFL star has filed a lawsuit alleging the “racist” CEO of a New York-based metaverse company urged him to engage in “sexual harassment games” with his co-workers.
Teyo Johnson is suing Everyrealm and its CEO, Janine Yorio, accusing her of overseeing a toxic workplace where she made lewd remarks about employees’ sex lives and racial slurs directed at black employees, according to the New York Post.
Yorio reportedly threatened to “trade” Johnson, a former Oakland Raiders tight end who also played football while a student at Stanford University, if he didn’t do his job.
Johnson claimed that during a March business trip to the South By Southwest event in Austin, Texas, Yorio encouraged him to play a game where the acronyms “KYC” and “KYP,” which stand for “knowing your customer” and “knowing your staff,” respectively, were “euphemisms for having sex or connecting with colleagues and business partners,” the lawsuit claims.
Yorio reportedly told Johnson that being sexually involved with a co-worker while on a business trip was the way to play. Johnson told the CEO he was “very close to someone already,” according to the lawsuit. In response, she allegedly visited his hotel room and hinted that she believed he would cheat on his girlfriend to participate in the game.
Additionally, Johnson said Yorio called him “the whitest black person” and a “dumb black person” while making insulting jokes about his girlfriend’s menstrual cycle. Johnson accused Yorio of calling him “dk” and “f-king dk”, among other epithets.
A spokesperson for Everyrealm denies the “lies” Johnson made against the company and its CEO in the lawsuit, filed in August in federal court in Manhattan.
“As we stated in our court documents, this employee only worked at the company for three months,” the spokesperson said in a statement, according to The Post, and “was terminated for poor performance , expense account abuse and falling asleep on the job.”
Everyrealm further claimed in a court document that Johnson publicly and routinely disparaged the mother of his child and asked the company to pay a portion of her earnings in cash to avoid garnishment of child support payments. The company said it denied the request.
Yorio faces similar charges in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court in December by Gatsby Frimpong, another black former employee. Frimpong claimed that Yorio passed him on for promotion after refusing his advances and that he was paid significantly less than a white technical director for comparable work.
A representative for Everyrealm called the accusations “absurd”, adding that Frimpong was a remote worker and that he and Yorio only spoke occasionally in video calls.
“These lawsuits are filled with false allegations from former employees that demand multimillion-dollar settlements,” the spokesperson said, The Post reported. “Our company works hard to foster a supportive and inclusive workplace, and we will continue to defend against these lawsuits.”
Johnson’s lawsuit also alleges that William Kerr, the company’s general counsel, referred to famed hotel heiress Paris Hilton, an Everyrealm investor, as “one night in Paris,” which is the name of the company. a revenge porn movie leaked on the internet in 2004.
The former NFL athlete was shocked that he was forced to listen to Kerr’s negative remarks and “sexual harassment nickname,” the lawsuit says.
Everyrealm reportedly fired Johnson for exposing a cryptocurrency-based “game scheme” using professional soccer players’ NFT (non-fungible token) playing cards.
“Users would enter the cryptocurrency into a pool and then earn money if their NFT playing cards performed better than other players’ NFTs,” according to the lawsuit, The Post reported. Johnson believed the scheme violated several New York and federal laws since “randomizing card games … would be considered gambling and therefore illegal,” according to the filing.
Johnson claims that Yorio “embedded” him and that she and her management team deliberately ruined his attempt to establish a relationship between Everyrealm and the NFL in retaliation for exposing crypto fraud.
Everyrealm has filed a lawsuit against Johnson, Frimpong and a third employee who sued, former human resources manager Katherine Yost, alleging the plaintiffs were pursuing a ‘extortionate’ $1.9 million claim and trying to to settle disputes by arbitration instead of litigation. . Yost alleged “discriminatory and illegal policies and acts”,
“Janine Yorio and her enablers in the Everyrealm comments show how afraid they are of the truth,” Johnson’s attorney Shane Seppinni said, according to The Post.
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The ex-NFL star claims the ‘racist’ CEO urged him to sleep with co-workers, according to the lawsuit, which appeared first on TheGrio.
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