Daymond John Sues Former COVID Mask Business Partners Over Alleged Millions In Unpaid Profits

He says Lisa Kornman Avila and Rashmi Budhram withheld profits after he brought them in on lucrative PPE deals with state governments during the early days of COVID-19.

Business mogul Daymond John is taking legal action against two former partners behind a PPE venture, claiming they owe him “at least tens of millions of dollars” in commissions.

In a lawsuit filed on April 3, John accuses product sourcing experts Lisa Kornman Avila and Rashmi Budhram of withholding profits after he brought them into lucrative PPE deals with state governments during the early days of COVID-19, The Independent reports.

“To date, defendants have refused to pay any money to Shark [Group, John’s company], despite securing multiple orders worth hundreds of millions of dollars from [the California Department of General Services] and other entities due to Shark’s efforts,” the complaint states.

According to the FUBU founder, he secured contracts through The Shark Group to supply agencies like the California Department of General Services, the New York State Department of Health, and the State of Michigan with critical PPE at the height of the pandemic, including N95 masks, goggles, and isolation gowns.

The lawsuit claims that once the deals were in place, Kornman and Budhram leveraged their manufacturing contacts to fulfill orders, generating nearly $150 million for themselves from a single transaction.

According to the complaint, John’s agreed-upon referral fee from the deal was roughly $30 million. However, he alleges that Kornman and Budhram, who previously worked out of his New York City office and even appeared on television with him, began cutting him out of the business shortly after the deal closed in spring 2020.

According to the complaint, Kornman and Budhram had worked with John since 2014 through their Palm Beach-based company, Buko LLC, under a deal where John referred clients and earned commissions. He now alleges they restructured the business under multiple entities, including 5 Time Zones LLC, to conceal tens of millions in profits and shield themselves from financial liability.

John’s attorney, Matthew Blit, declined further comment, saying the complaint “speaks for itself.” Kornman and Budhram’s lawyer, Christopher Frost, called the lawsuit “false and inflammatory,” adding that his clients are disappointed by the claims.

“As they will show in their legal response, both women are entrepreneurs with decades of experience sourcing and manufacturing a variety of products, including PPE, built on relationships that predate both the COVID-19 pandemic and their association with Daymond John,” Frost said.

Frost argued that John stepped away from the California deal, requesting no involvement in name, financing, or manufacturing after his group faced price-gouging allegations, and said Kornman and Budhram honored that request by passing the savings from his would-be commission onto the state.

“Now that the media coverage has died down, Mr. John seeks to profiteer by blaming [Kornman and Budhram] for following the very request that shielded him from scrutiny,” Frost said. “He threatened them for more than five years through two different lawyers before finding one willing to file this weak lawsuit. Ms. [Kornman] and Ms. Budhram have always acted honorably and within their legal obligations, and they look forward to the truth coming out.”

Buko LLC now has about three weeks to respond to the allegations formally.