AOL Calls Former Exec a Double Dipper

LOS ANGELES (CN) - A former AOL executive committed a "brazen act of duplicity and deceit" by billing AOL $1 million for bogus software support services through his dummy company, AOL claims in court.

AOL, Cambio Entertainment and AOL Productions sued its former Director of Studio Technology Jonathan Woods and his company Twelve 28 Media in Federal Court.

AOL seeks damages and exemplary damages for racketeering, conspiracy, fraud, fraudulent inducement and conversion.

According to the Aug. 1 lawsuit, Woods founded Twelve28 in October 2010, registering a website for the company at GoDaddy. AOL claims that Woods listed his Los Angeles and Santa Monica addresses for the business, and also filed a W-9 tax form for the entity under his mother's Chicago address.

In the two years from July 2012 until July 2014, Woods and his company invoiced AOL for software support services that were "already within Woods' own job description," AOL says in the lawsuit.

Woods invoiced for services that AOL "never received and did not require" and that "had no meaningful value," the complaint states.

AOL says it paid a total of $1,032,741.30 to Woods' dummy company, wiring the money from AOL's New York bank account to Twelve28's account in California.

"In effect, Woods outsourced his own job responsibilities to Twelve28, and then was paid twice by AOL for that work: once by his salary and once by payments to Twelve28. Further, to the extent AOL received any products sold to it by Twelve28, these products were deceptively sold at an excessive price," the lawsuit states. "Defendants were able to accomplish this scheme through Woods' manipulation of AOL's procurement process for his own benefit."

AOL is represented by Mark Litvack, with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.

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