Venture firm Mithril sued by former counsel
Whistleblower alleges retaliation by firm backed by Peter Thiel.
The former general counsel of Mithril Capital, a venture capital firm co-founded by investor Peter Thiel, is suing her ex-employer, saying she was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for acting as a whistleblower.
Crystal McKellar, the former Mithril attorney and managing director, filed the countersuit Thursday, claiming that management punished her for alerting authorities to alleged financial fraud at the firm.
In the complaint, McKellar reconstructs several conversations with Thiel, Mithril’s largest backer, who is not named as a defendant. Instead, the suit takes aim at Mirthril’s managing director, Ajay Royan, who McKellar alleges repeatedly lied to the firm’s investors. Royan didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The filing represents the latest, and most dramatic, volley in what has become a pitched battle over the formerly low-key venture firm. Last month, Mithril sued McKellar in Texas, alleging she conducted a “whisper campaign” to sully its reputation while setting up a competing venture firm.
It also filed a separate suit in Delaware last month, alleging that McKellar breached confidentiality and other agreements and was fired for cause.
McKellar’s complaint disputed those allegations, calling them a “pretext” for retaliation against her.
In her countersuit, McKellar said that in conversations with Thiel, he expressed concern about Mithril, asking her whether Royan was suffering from a “mental episode” or was “engaged in a massive financial fraud,” after the firm reduced the size of its investment team.
She also said that she felt she had no recourse to address the “ongoing fraud” at Mithril, other than going to federal authorities. A spokesman for Thiel didn’t immediately have a comment.
McKellar is seeking to recoup at least $30 million in lost compensation, her lawsuit states, plus $30 million more for damages for the fallout she said she suffered because she told the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission about mismanagement at the Austin, Texas-based firm.
Since launching operations in 2012, Mithril has raised $1.2 billion from investors.
The firm, which relocated earlier this year from San Francisco, is known for making bets on late-stage companies including data-mining company Palantir Technologies Inc. and internet news site Reddit Inc. Its largest exit came earlier this year when Johnson & Johnson acquired surgical robotics company Auris Health for $3.4 billion.
McKellar, who once played Becky Slater on the hit TV show “The Wonder Years,” graduated from Yale University, earned her law degree from Harvard Law School and practiced law for nearly a decade before starting at Mithril. She joined her former Yale classmate Royan at the firm in 2012 as its general counsel and served as a managing director.
McKellar’s lawsuit alleges that Royan lied about Mithril in investor meetings, in financial statements, on the firm’s website and in published interviews with the media. It accuses Royan of falsely claiming he waived management fees charged to Mithril investors in 2017, falsely representing the presence of a larger investment team than it actually had and inflating the valuations of portfolio companies in Mithril’s reported financials.
The suit alleges that Royan hiked up the valuations in an effort to “pilfer hundreds of thousands of dollars in unearned management fees and millions of dollars in unjustified carried interest from Mithril’s investors.”
McKellar’s complaint said she urged the firm to take corrective measures while she was still an employee.
That included asking Royan to hire a new chief financial officer to replace his sister, Anuja Royan, who served in that capacity. Nothing was done, according to the suit. McKellar met with federal authorities and alerted Mithril’s outside auditor to address her concerns, actions the complaint alleges she was later wrongfully terminated for taking.