In this articleBOWLFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTA former executive at Bowlero, the world’s largest owner and operator of bowling centers, has asked a court’s permission to countersue his former employer for extortion and retaliation, after an executive on a recorded call threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to spilling company secrets, according to a transcript of the conversation filed in court.The allegations by Bowlero’s former chief information officer, Thomas Tanase, filed Wednesday in a proposed countersuit in Virginia federal court, come after he and dozens of others filed discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging they were fired based on their age or out of retaliation, according to company securities filings and the proposed countersuit. Bowlero denies the claims.The company, which went public in late 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, was among the select successful stocks to emerge from the SPAC boom. It owns two of the biggest brands in bowling — AMF and Lucky Strike — and operated more than 300 bowling centers across North America as of July. Between 2021 and 2023, Bowlero nearly tripled its annual revenue, from $395 million to $1.06 billion, and it expects sales to grow between 10% and 15% in fiscal 2024, according to company filings.Tanase started with the company’s information technology department in 2001 before climbing his way up to the C-suite, where he worked closely with the company’s CEO and frequently had access to sensitive information contained in the CEO’s email accounts, he said in court filings. He says the company fired him in May because of his age, and in August, he filed a discrimination claim with the EEOC, according to a copy of the claim, which was included as an exhibit to the proposed countersuit.Bowlero says that Tanase resigned and then had a change of heart when he realized he wouldn’t get severance pay. In July, the company sued him, alleging he hacked into the email account of CEO Thomas Shannon, copied company documents onto a personal USB drive and refused to hand over his company-issued devices. Tanase denies the claims.Now, Tanase is seeking the court’s permission to countersue Bowlero and the company’s executive vice chairman, Brett Parker. Federal rules require Tanase to get permission to countersue given the timing of the filings.In the proposed countersuit, Tanase alleges that Parker threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to accessing Shannon’s emails and “come clean” about information he shared with Daniel Dowe, the attorney representing the EEOC complainants, and with CNBC, which has previously written about the discrimination allegations against Bowlero. During a March deposition, Tanase testified that he hadn’t spoken with CNBC, or any other media outlet, about the company.’You tell us everything you know’In a phone conversation between Tanase and Parker that Tanase recorded in June 2023, Bowlero’s vice chairman and former finance chief allegedly asked Tanase numerous times to reveal what he’d said and told him that if he did, all would be forgiven, a …
Article Attribution | Read More at Article Source
[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnIn this articleBOWLFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTA former executive at Bowlero, the world’s largest owner and operator of bowling centers, has asked a court’s permission to countersue his former employer for extortion and retaliation, after an executive on a recorded call threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to spilling company secrets, according to a transcript of the conversation filed in court.The allegations by Bowlero’s former chief information officer, Thomas Tanase, filed Wednesday in a proposed countersuit in Virginia federal court, come after he and dozens of others filed discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging they were fired based on their age or out of retaliation, according to company securities filings and the proposed countersuit. Bowlero denies the claims.The company, which went public in late 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, was among the select successful stocks to emerge from the SPAC boom. It owns two of the biggest brands in bowling — AMF and Lucky Strike — and operated more than 300 bowling centers across North America as of July. Between 2021 and 2023, Bowlero nearly tripled its annual revenue, from $395 million to $1.06 billion, and it expects sales to grow between 10% and 15% in fiscal 2024, according to company filings.Tanase started with the company’s information technology department in 2001 before climbing his way up to the C-suite, where he worked closely with the company’s CEO and frequently had access to sensitive information contained in the CEO’s email accounts, he said in court filings. He says the company fired him in May because of his age, and in August, he filed a discrimination claim with the EEOC, according to a copy of the claim, which was included as an exhibit to the proposed countersuit.Bowlero says that Tanase resigned and then had a change of heart when he realized he wouldn’t get severance pay. In July, the company sued him, alleging he hacked into the email account of CEO Thomas Shannon, copied company documents onto a personal USB drive and refused to hand over his company-issued devices. Tanase denies the claims.Now, Tanase is seeking the court’s permission to countersue Bowlero and the company’s executive vice chairman, Brett Parker. Federal rules require Tanase to get permission to countersue given the timing of the filings.In the proposed countersuit, Tanase alleges that Parker threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to accessing Shannon’s emails and “come clean” about information he shared with Daniel Dowe, the attorney representing the EEOC complainants, and with CNBC, which has previously written about the discrimination allegations against Bowlero. During a March deposition, Tanase testified that he hadn’t spoken with CNBC, or any other media outlet, about the company.’You tell us everything you know’In a phone conversation between Tanase and Parker that Tanase recorded in June 2023, Bowlero’s vice chairman and former finance chief allegedly asked Tanase numerous times to reveal what he’d said and told him that if he did, all would be forgiven, a …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
