NEW YORK – Online video production company MrBeast announced Friday that it had laid off between 5 and 10 employees following an investigation into the YouTube empire’s corporate culture.

A company spokesperson declined to give a specific figure for layoffs, or to specify which employees were let go or for what reasons. But the upheaval comes as Jimmy Donaldson, who attracts millions of views under the pseudonym MrBeast with highly produced stunts and giveaways, faces accusations of impropriety against himself, his aides and others within of his multi-millionaire production company who threatened his family. picture.

Investigators identified only “several isolated instances of workplace harassment and misconduct,” according to a two-page letter sent Friday by Alex Spiro, a litigator who led the white shoe law firm’s investigation Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and whose clients include Jay-Z and Elon Musk.

The nearly three-month investigation concluded that there was no basis behind allegations that members of the MrBeast team engaged in sexual misconduct or “knowingly” employed people with “propensities or backgrounds towards illegal or questionable legal conduct.”

Spiro said the team interviewed 39 current and former employees. Millions of documents from phones, emails and messaging platforms including Discord and Slack were also reviewed, according to the letter.

The controversies surrounding the so-called king of YouTube started to snowball this summer. Ava Tyson, Donaldson’s friend and fellow creator accused of sharing inappropriate sexual messages with minors for several years, left the channel in July. A 2017 recording of Donaldson making racist comments and using homophobic slurs was also shared online by YouTuber Rosanna Pansino.

Preliminary filming in July for his ambitious Amazon Prime Video show “Beast Games” took place quickly. hit by safety complaints of some candidates who said they facing “limited subsistence” and “insufficient medical staff” while competing for a grand prize of $5 million.

MrBeast has in turn hired new executives, including a chief personnel officer and general counsel, according to Spiro, and additional employees are receiving “targeted training and executive coaching” for undisclosed policy violations. of the company.

The company “has grown extremely quickly, growing from a YouTube start-up made up of a group of talented young individuals to a much larger entity,” Spiro wrote to MrBeast’s board of directors. “It is not uncommon for core policies and practices in a mature business to lag behind business success. »

Donaldson has remained largely silent on these issues. He recently launched a brand of pre-packaged meals alongside internet personalities Logan Paul and KSI – marking his latest entry into the food market after his chocolate bar and burger chain received mixed reviews. Her 325 million YouTube subscribers continued to see their feeds filled with outrageous, high-energy videos, like one recently titled “100 Identical Twins Fight for $250,000.”

In a Friday article on X sharing Spiro’s letterDonaldson wrote that he “was asked to refrain from making public statements to allow for a detailed and impartial investigation.”

Pansino, one of Donaldson’s most vocal critics, answered the that findings of “workplace harassment and misconduct” and “multiple terminations” mean “it may be time for further investigation.”

Donaldson’s level of fame and growth puts him in “pretty rare company,” said advertising lawyer Robert Freund, whose firm helps creators resolve disputes. He said he suspected the letter was published in an effort to assure stakeholders “that he was running a professional operation”.

“I don’t see anything fishy or suspicious in what has been presented to us here as a public,” Freund told the Associated Press.

___

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support from the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.