Exec Says Allegation He Leaked Private Corporate Info Is ‘Utterly False Tale’ Created in a ‘Shakedown’ Attempt

Jeff Shell, president of Paramount Skydance, is accusing a “fixer” who has demanded $150 million from Shell over a purported deal for crisis communications consulting of trying to extort and defame him, by creating “an utterly false tale that Shell had disclosed confidential details about Paramount’s business.”

Shell was sued March 9 by R.J. Cipriani, who alleged in the lawsuit that he had a relationship with Shell for 18 months, in which Cipriani tipped Shell off to forthcoming news articles and offered PR advice. The suit also alleged that Shell shared non-public information with Cipriani about Paramount’s plans.

On Monday (March 16), attorneys for Shell filed a cross-complaint in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles, seeking unspecified monetary damages from Cipriani, as well as an “injunction restraining Cipriani from further defaming Shell.” A copy of the filing is at this link.

“Shell refuses to be shaken down — he has done nothing wrong,” Shell’s counterclaim says. “Shell owes Cipriani nothing and brings these counterclaims to seek redress for the damages that he has suffered as a result of Cipriani’s relentless, malicious campaign to extort and defame him. Shell further expressly reserves the right to supplement these counterclaims to seek full restitution and recourse against Cipriani and his agents that have knowingly participated in his slanderous and extortionate scheme.”

Cipriani’s lawsuit alleged that he and Shell had an oral agreement that Shell would help produce “Star Serenade,” a TV show, in exchange for the crisis communications services. Shell said he “politely declined” Cipriani’s request to produce the show because “Paramount did not make reality TV shows” and that “Shell did not make promises to produce shows generally — much less to people he barely knew,” according to Shell’s legal filing.

The suit filed by Cipriani also alleged Shell shared confidential info about Paramount Skydance with Cipriani, including Shell’s alleged belief that Paramount is overpaying for Warner Bros. Discovery. “We’re paying way too much for Warner Bros. If we could just wait another year, we could get it a whole lot cheaper,” Cipriani’s suit quoted Shell as saying. In December, Netflix had sealed a deal to buy Warner Bros.’s studios and streaming business before Paramount came in with the winning bid in late February — a deal with an enterprise value of $111 billion — and Netflix declined to make a counteroffer. 

In addition, Cipriani’s lawsuit claimed that Cipriani had “orchestrat[ed]” a June 23, 2025, article in the Hollywood Reporter about a dispute between Shell and “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Cipriani claimed the article “exposed the greediness” of Parker and Stone, who were accusing Shell of interfering in “South Park” streaming rights negotiations with third parties.

About this, Shell’s cross-claim filing said: “Because Cipriani had previously represented to Shell that he had done work for the FBI, Shell asked him about certain online death threats that he had received in connection with a dispute between Skydance and the creators of ‘South Park.’ Cipriani offered no meaningful insights or perspective, and Shell declined Cipriani’s offer to help. Cipriani, however, later claimed that — without Shell’s knowledge or consent — he had purportedly planted an article about the dispute that was favorable to Shell. Shell did not believe him, and Cipriani acknowledged that Shell had never asked him to do so in any event, but Shell thanked him nonetheless. This was Cipriani’s hook.”

On Feb. 2, 2026, Shell’s attorney at the time, Patricia Glaser, arranged a meeting with the executive and Cipriani at Glaser’s office in Century City, per Shell’s cross-claim. (Glaser had initially introduced Shell to Cipriani.) At that meeting, Cipriani demanded Shell pay money for “certain ‘services’ that he had purportedly, and unbeknownst to Shell, been providing to him,” but Shell refused to pay “a dime,” according to Shell’s counterclaim.

Subsequent to that, according to Shell’s legal filing, Cipriani “fabricated” claims “that Shell had disclosed to him confidential information about Paramount’s deals with the UFC and Warner Bros. Discovery in violation of federal securities law. While these false accusations have no legal or logical relation to Cipriani’s purported breach-of-contract claim, Cipriani embedded the accusations into a draft complaint — ominously threatening to report the alleged securities violations to the SEC and other law enforcement, if Shell did not pay to resolve the purported claims.”

Shell’s counterclaim continued, “Though Cipriani’s accusations were false, the threat of federal investigation was real. Cipriani banked that Shell, who had been the subject of negative publicity while at a prior employer, would be willing to pay a significant sum to avoid federal scrutiny and another media storm. But Shell refused to give in. Instead, he immediately told Paramount of the criminal threats and false accusations, and rejected Cipriani’s extortionate overtures.” Following that, Cipriani “tried to ratchet up the pressure” and began “leaking drafts of his complaint to various media outlets and worked to shape the resulting stories to inflict maximum damage to Shell’s reputation and livelihood,” per Shell’s legal filing. “When that didn’t yield a quick settlement, Cipriani began amplifying the story on social media and proliferating his false and defamatory lies about Shell — all the while continuing to make settlement overtures in the hopes that Shell would pay to make it stop. Shell would not. Cipriani, in turn, proceeded to file a false report to the SEC accusing Shell of violating securities laws based on conversations that never happened.”

Paramount Skydance in August 2025 announced a seven-year, $7.7 billion deal with UFC making Paramount+ the exclusive U.S. rightsholder for the MMA promoter’s events starting in 2026.

According to Shell’s cross-complaint, “R.J. Cipriani did not come to Court to enforce some purported oral agreement. He came to complete a shakedown. Cipriani’s playbook works like this: use a trusted mutual connection to cozy up to a high-profile target; leech to the fringes of the target’s world while manufacturing the illusion of closeness; falsely claim you have been helping the target from behind the scenes; then strike — demand compensation for your unsolicited efforts and, if not paid, weaponize that fiction, and the added threat of public exposure of equally false and salacious lies, to extract a massive payday.”

Shell’s legal filing continued, “Cipriani followed this script in his effort to shake down Jeff Shell. But Cipriani — an inveterate gambler and self-described ‘fixer’ — overplayed his hand. He thought he could manipulate Shell, the President of Paramount Skydance Corporation, into paying millions in hush money to keep Cipriani from sabotaging Shell’s reputation. He placed a high-stakes bet that, if he concocted an utterly false tale that Shell had disclosed confidential details about Paramount’s business, Shell would pay Cipriani a ransom to keep him from going public with his heinous lies. But Shell called his bluff: Shell had disclosed no such information, and he refused to pay a dime. Under black-letter California law, Cipriani’s use of threats to extract money was extortion. And Cipriani’s false and incendiary accusations in the press and to countless others that Shell had violated securities law are defamation per se.”

Regarding the March 9 lawsuit filed by Cipriani, Shell’s cross-complaint says that “In a last desperate grasp for leverage, he named Shell’s wife, Laura, as a defendant and published the Shells’ home address in his publicly filed Complaint — a sanctionable step that has no bearing on any claim and was plainly designed to harass and threaten them. Cipriani’s claims against Laura rest entirely on an invented accusation that Shell purportedly transferred assets to Laura to avoid paying Cipriani money owed under the fictitious alleged agreement. There is no basis in fact or law for any of it. But Cipriani’s actions have made clear that neither the law nor the truth will hinder him. His filed Complaint is nothing more than a vehicle to continue his slanderous and extortionate campaign against Shell — and now his family — in the hopes of leveraging a settlement.”

Prior to being recruited by David Ellison to be president of Paramount in mid-2024, Shell served as chairman of RedBird Sports & Media since February 2024; RedBird Capital Partners is backing Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition and was an investor in Skydance Media’s deal for Paramount Global.

Prior to that, Shell was CEO of NBCUniversal. In April 2023, Comcast fired Shell after an internal investigation found that he had engaged in an “inappropriate” relationship with an NBCU employee, who had filed a complaint against Shell for sexual harassment and sex discrimination.