Rick Fox, owner of Beverly Hills-based esports organization Echo Fox, sued several of his business partners Sept. 30, alleging they engaged in fraud and mismanagement of company funds.
Fox requests up to $11 million in compensatory and additional punitive damages in the lawsuit, which was filed in L.A. County Superior Court.
“Rick Fox’s lawsuit is a transparent attempt to divert attention from the train wreck he left behind at Echo Fox, where a supermajority of the limited partners in Echo Fox filed a lawsuit to remove him and his company from the general partner role based on his self-dealing and grossly inept management,” David Swift, attorney for Echo Fox investor Amit Raizada, wrote in an email.
Swift added, “the lawsuit is littered with categorically false allegations” about the defendants.
Investors Stratton Sclavos and Amit Raizada are named as defendants in Fox’s suit as is Raizada’s brother and chief operating officer of Eleven Stones, Ravi Srivastava.
Eleven Stones formerly owned a controlling interest in the Echo Fox general partnership but sold it to Fox and his business partner Khalid Jones of SourceRock Partners in December 2018.
Sclavos is a founding partner of Beverly Hills firm Vision Venture Partners, which invested $11.3 million in Echo Fox in early 2018. He sued in August for a restraining order against Fox to remove him from the general partnership. The order was denied but Fox’s role in the partnership remains contested.
Fox could be voted out of the entity altogether at a meeting of supermajority shareholders on Oct. 21 over his handling of the company’s recent sale of a spot in West L.A.-based Riot Games Inc.’s “League of Legends” esports tournament.
Fox also accused Raizada of various instances of defamation in a separate claim.
“I hope that this lawsuit and the facts it reveals will serve as a warning to others about the dangers of doing business with him,” Fox wrote in a statement. “I am calling on regulators and law enforcement to immediately look into Amit Raizada and his illegal, deceptive business practices.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated when Rick Fox filed a lawsuit against his Echo Fox business partners. He filed the lawsuit Sept. 30.
