Kim Kardashian Ruined His Life : Hollywood Mafia Exposed
Kim Kardashian Ruined His Life : Hollywood Mafia Exposed
David Liebensohn claims he lost everything because of corrupt Kardashian business ethics, eight years later he's finally ready to talk about it
My introduction to this scandal came thanks to a follower who sent me a link to David’s website when it first appeared. I saw that he had a compelling mission statement, but I was drowning in overdue stories, so it fell off my radar until Emilie Hagen reached out this week, asking me to take another look at it. A woman named Mayra Energy had spotted David in Arizona with his sign and sent it to Emilie, figuring the two of them could help him get the story out. Thanks to their efforts, David and his hand-drawn sign directing people to a website David built on his phone while living in his car, the story quickly gained traction on Reddit and TikTok as further proof of the Kardashians' callous dealings, stomping on entrepreneurs using ruthless tactics, legal threats, and orchestrated setups to railroad and silence them.
I invited him over to explain it to me himself.
Emilie and David showed up last night. We took the sign downtown to walk the pier and then spent seven hours untangling how Kim managed to gain full control over two apps he created, funded, and pitched to her after she contacted him with interest in partnering. And while the media focus continues to zero in on the Kimoji accusations (because it’s the more familiar app) the real scandal is the highjacking of Censorgram — now an integral feature on Instagram. Keep in mind — at the time — Kim and Kanye were close friends with the CEO of instagram, Kevin Systrom, (Pre-Facebook takeover) meaning they had direct connections to sell him on an idea.
Here’s how it all went down.
DAVID’S WEBSITE INTRO
“I'm David Liebensohn, a once successful entrepreneur and father of four, who lost everything after a nightmare of a business deal with Kim Kardashian and her mother Kris Jenner. This experience destroyed me and my entire family. I lost not only my businesses, ideas and intellectual property, but also my life savings and my dignity.
The trauma I've endured from this situation has been debilitating. Living in a Kardashian infested world has made this experience especially triggering. Everywhere I turn, there they are. The media pushes them onto us against our will day after day. They're undeniably unavoidable.
A few weeks ago, I built a website on my iPhone to share my story with the world. Keeping this experience buried inside has been eating me alive for years. I was scared to speak up because of the Kardashian's heavy influence in the media. However, I finally found the strength to stand up for myself and get my life back on the trajectory it was on before it took a turn for the worse.
I cannot hide this story from the public any longer. “
By 2014, David had established himself as a successful entrepreneur who was "heavily invested" in developing tech projects. Before this venture he built a multi-million dollar construction company from a 3,500 tax return. He describes himself as a self-made success with a rough background. His father died when he was young and his family was uprooted when his mother remarried. After much conflict at home, David said his mother didn’t know what to do with him. When he was 16, she dropped him off at a homeless shelter in Louisiana. He basically raised himself.
He found support in the skate community but eventually dedicated himself to building his first business from scratch.
After liquidating the sale of his construction company, he took his 2 million profit and sights set on the tech industry. He created a popular phone case business with the help of strategic marketing on Instagram. The company thrived on the hype it created surrounding merchandise drops, but they were flooded with negative comments from disgruntled customers whenever something went wrong with one of these drops. Censorgram was born from David's own desire to weed out the negativity he was experiencing as a business owner. Kim Kardashian, dealing with an uptick in cyber attacks on her own social media channels, was an early user of the app.
Not long after the launch, Jonathan Cheban (Kim’s best friend) reached out (via DM) to let David know that Kim had an interest in investing in the app. The deal he proposed gave Kim a 60 % profit. David declined the offer immediately. He told Cheban he was still entertaining interest from other investors so negotiations with Cheban were short-lived. He erased the thread and continued talks with others interested in investing.
The following day, Kim reached out herself, wanting to reexamine the deal. This time, she proposed investing in the company and linking up with David and his partners to form a joint foundation dedicated to anti-cyberbullying. David says Kim seemed genuine and “very convincing” in her desire to rebrand herself as a spokesperson for this cause but her tone quickly shifted when he mentioned the app was free. In the audio, you can hear her confusion and concern about how his profit is secured. David explained to her the perks of a paid option. He also mentioned there was interest from Daymond John, the president and chief executive officer of FUBU and Shark Tank investor, about the app. Kim told David she was friends with Daymond and offered to reach out on his behalf to feel out his interest in Censorship.
After this conversation, however, David says Daymond’s interest shut down and everything went quiet after this call with Kim.
Leaked audio of Kim’s call
A phone call from Kris Jenner followed.
As David was rushing through airport security, headed for Florida, Kris called him to say how impressed she was after learning more about the app. She was also curious about how he made his money. Kris, he says, was digging for financial details while complimenting his ingenuity. She was curious about how it all worked from a financial angle. At the end of the call, she invited him and his partners to meet (in person) at her home in Calabasas to finalize the deal.
July 28th, 2014
The meeting was attended by David Liebensohn Gena Liebensohn, Dan Rice, Narayan Shankar, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Todd Wilson and Stephanie Shepherd. The meeting was all business. No snacks offered, only Fiji water. Hidden cameras were situated everywhere around the house.
Meeting notes:
“The team walked into the home, Kris Jenner's assistant (Katherine Ellena) answered the door, they had to wait for Kris to be ready, so they stood around in the foyer, they were walked into another room. There was a big table with Fiji water on it. In the room was Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian and Todd Wilson. Kim stood up and introduced herself to the team. Censorgram was discussed for about 20-25 minutes, they spoke about bullying and the importance of the app to clean up the internet, they spoke about David's and Gena's children and how it was to protect them, and Kim agreed for it to protect her own children is why she loved the app so much. At this time, they began discussing percentages, Liebensohn suggested an 80/20 split, they went back and forth for a few minutes, the final agreement was 60/40 with the Kardashian's collecting the funding which is what Jenner had suggested, they mentioned having a family friend that would most likely fund it. Then Narayan mentioned that he had someone that would be interested in, Kim got up to go over to Narayan and he showed Kim the Kimoji idea on his phone. Kim turned to her mom and was smiling, and she expressed her love for the product. Kris asked for it to be sent to her, Narayan then emailed it to Kris from his phone during the meeting. The discussion went to Kimoji and the other emoji projects that were being worked, she then mentioned that she would like to make some changes to the emoji designs that were created, the team then explained that they could do this for her entire family not just her. Kim Kardashian appointed her assistant, Stephanie, to be person of contact for Kimoji moving forward. Kris and Kim agreed that they would like to move forward with both apps and that they would get a contract written up asap. The team and Jenner/Kardashian shook hands in agreement. As they were all leaving Todd Wilson said “oh by the way you must sign the NDA before you leave, to protect yourselves and my client Kardashian.” Jenner stated that if they didn't sign before they left that the deal was off the table. They were all taken by surprise. Liebensohn and Rice agreed to sign, Narayan was very uneasy about it. He was so uneasy that he put his social security number down backwards.”
Kimoji, at this point, was offered as a secondary perk in the deal. Kim loved the idea of customized emojis in her likeness and promised her whole family would be on board for it too. Kim's team reportedly settled on an agreement that made them "equal partners" on Kimoji, but split Censorgram 60-40%. David says he and his colleagues were on cloud nine. "Everyone was excited after this meeting." Kim's team verbally agreed to sign off on both projects, with pending contracts to follow. "We thought we were the best thing since sliced bread," David says. "We were at the forefront. We thought we were going to be billionaires with this patent." (The patent was exclusively funded by David.)
Things took a sharp turn in August.
The Kardashians team reached out again. This time they wanted David and his partners to take a course that would prepare them for working with an A-List celebrity. Days later, with everything moving forward and a contract in the works, Kim called asking him about trademarking. She wanted to know if he had trademarked Kimoji yet. He told her he was holding off because he figured it was better to file once they had established their joint foundation. He told her that because the app was in her likeness, it seemed "fair" to wait to include her in the trademark. Kim told David she could have her team do it "to make it "easier" for him. But five minutes later, she called again. Her tone drastically different. She sounded frantic and upset. "Her whole demeanor changed,” he says. She was asking him who “Ryan was” was. The question confused David because Narayan (who goes by Ryan) was one of his partners she had been dealing with for the past few weeks and had been at the meeting when the deal was made. "She was pretending not to know who Narayan was," just insinuating that her privacy had been compromised.
David later learned that the trademark for Kimoji was filed in the five minutes between these two calls. All communication with the family came to an abrupt halt.
The next day, a cease and desist letter from Kim's Attorney, Martin Singer, the Hollywood powerhouse that represented Bill Cosby, showed up via email threatening a 5 million dollar lawsuit for "violating Kim's privacy" if they did not turn over all rights to both apps to Kim. They refused to give them any details about the infringement that triggered her wanting to pull out of the deal.
When David finally uncovered the basis of the lawsuit, he saw it was a text message that Narayan sent a female friend he knew was a "big fan" of Kim to blame. Something along the lines of: "I can't believe we are working with your dream girl." Turns out, this female friend, Alice Gorodetsky, had also been working with Narayan on a business venture that ultimately flopped. David claims she was jealous over Narayan’s partnering with Kim, so she forwarded the text to a mutual friend of Kim's, with the intentions of ruining the deal.
It worked.
Every decision made after this lawsuit threat, David says was made under duress. "We all thought we had done something wrong. And we had everything to lose." One of his partners even forged his signature when he refused to sign the settlement, (allegedly processed without notarization.) Even his lawyer urged him to back off because of the money and power he was up against.
A year after this whole ordeal, Instagram implemented its own version of Censorgram - a feature they still have in effect today. David suspects Kim sold it to them for multi-millions after he lost all legal rights to it.
Kanye brags in the song "Facts" that Kimojis makes them "a million a minute."
The deal falling through led to a downward spiral in his personal life. He says he felt humiliated, enraged, helpless, and depressed.
"My partners and I never saw a single dollar. All we saw was billboard after billboard, article after article praising the Kardashian family for being business savvy," he explains. "Seeing their empire grow more and more each year, has been triggering, as this family is impossible to avoid in this Kardashian-infested world." David claims he lost all the money he invested in the patent and "wasted" hundreds of thousands on legal fees. It caused him to lose friendships when he could not repay the people who loaned him money to fight back. He lost his marriage, and his relationship with his four kids, all fans of the Kardashians, he says was severely damaged by the consequences of this experience.
He considered suicide twice, after going through this, he told me.
In 2019 he filed a 100 million dollar lawsuit claiming that he was "mishandled" by his ex-attorney, who reportedly added the Kimoji case to his bio even though there was never a resolution. In addition, the Kardashians slapped him with over $400,000 in legal fees "from arbitration" that he was, as he claims, not a part of. All of these, alleged tactics to keep David silent. "They used this as a threat for me to keep my mouth shut: 'Shut up or we'll take your assets and garnish your wages."
@Kanyesposts breaks it down with David
David now works three jobs and sleeps in his car to spread his message. When a producer working on a documentary about the rise of the Kardashian empire reached out recently, in shock over the lawsuit she stumbled upon, he says it gave him the confidence to try and revive his story. "If she could be that horrified by what she found, I thought maybe others would be too."
Now that he has "nothing left for them to take," David is determined to get his story out however he can. "I've never stopped thinking about what I could do to hold them accountable and get my life back and decided it's time for me to finally share this story that's been eating me alive for years and hopefully find a light at the end of the tunnel."
He is hoping that by coming forward about his experience, others who have been silenced by this Hollywood Mafia, will too.
Hold The Kardashian-Jenner Family Accountable For Their Predatory Business Practices by singing this petition
this is the cherry on top of the “i loathe the kardashians” sundae!! can we make this story shareable to reach a larger audience? this needs to blow up in their overfilled faces! also, let’s get david in a bed and out of his car.
Friend belongs to Calabasas CC - after a round of golf a couple weeks ago, saw a drunken passed out Kris Jenner being carried out by staff, no entourage or Corey Gamble in sight.