'Wonder Years' actress in more hot water with billionaire Peter Thiel's firm
A former child star engaged a legal battle with billionaire Peter Thiel’s venture fund is in even more hot water for allegedly deleting nearly 2,000 text messages from her work phone, according to a report.
“The Wonder Years” actress Crystal McKellar allegedly deleted 1,941 messages she had sent and received during the eight months between when she left Mithril Capital Management, which was co-founded by Thiel, and when the company recovered her phone, the New York Post reported, citing court papers.
“Shockingly, Ms. McKellar deleted nearly all of the text messages sent to or from her Mithril Capital Management cellular telephone, despite knowing that Mithril Capital Management was investigating her material breach of her agreements,” according to a lawsuit filed last week in Delaware Chancery Court and obtained by the Post.
Only 32 text messages were left on the phone when Mithril received the device on Sept. 30, according to the report.
McKellar, who went to Harvard Law School and began working as Mithril’s general counsel in 2012, played Becky Slater on the hit show, which aired from 1988 to 1993.
The 43-year-old was previously accused in a lawsuit filed by the firm in Texas just weeks ago of writing anonymous, handwritten missives to Mithril’s investors after she left the company in February for a new job that paid $225,000, according to an earlier Post report.
In one letter, she allegedly accused the venture capital firm’s co-founder, Ajay Royan, of “lying to investors and the public about how much he is charging us in management fees,” according to the report.
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Investigators used forensic handwriting to link McKellar to the notes, the Post reported.
The most recent suit accuses her of the “unauthorized removal, destruction, and attempted destruction of Mithril records and property,” according to the Post.
McKeller plans to respond to the "baseless claims," which she maintains were "brought to deflect attention from Mithril's serious wrongdoing resulting in publicly reported government investigations into Mithril," according to a statement provided by her attorney
"Mithril has chosen to litigate this matter in the press and to disseminate false statements about Crystal," the statement says. "One notable example is Mithril’s suggestion that Crystal intentionally destroyed information relevant to her dispute with Mithril – which is simply not true."
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While she told the Post the latest allegations were “news” to her, she previously told the outlet all accusations of wrongdoing were “unequivocally false, and it will be a simple matter to prove them false if it gets that far.”
“I left Mithril earlier this year when it became clear to me that Mithril’s leadership was lying to its investors and that the promises it had made were not going to be kept,” she said.
This story has been updated with comments from McKellar.