YouTube star SSSniperWolf is being sued by her estranged husband and former collaborator for breach of contract and financial misdoings relating to her channel.
According to court documents obtained by The Messenger, SSSniperWolf, whose real name is Alia Shelesh, is accused of failing to pay her estranged husband Evan Young his earnings for his role in their joint company Channel Red.
In the filing, Young alleges that he and Shelesh are 50% members and managers of Channel Red, which produces content for several of the couple's YouTube channels, including SSSniperWolf, Young's channel
MisterSausageBoy and Shelesh's personal channel
Little Lia. After the pair filed for divorce in late 2022, Young says Shelesh created new channels to divert earnings to herself. Shelesh is also accused of taking hard drives and phones that belong to Channel Red and refusing to give them to Young, he says.
SSSniperWolf is a "reaction" channel, meaning that Shelesh shares her thoughts and opinions on other creators' videos. The channel began as a gaming channel, in which Shelesh was shown seemingly playing video games, including
Call of Duty and
Metal Gear Rising: Resistance.
Young says that he and Shelesh have split the earnings for SSSniperWolf, which has more than 34 million subscribers on the platform, since the channel was founded and is seeking the payment he is owed since the pair split.
In total, the YouTuber faces seven claims, including breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, interference with contractual relations and business expectancy and more.
In the Aug. 17 filing, Young also alleges that he has been the one creating SSSniperWolf's content for years and that he writes scripts, curates content and edits videos while Shelesh is the "face" of the channel.
"While Shelesh was the 'face' of the 'SSSniperwolf' YouTube channel, Young is and was at all times heavily involved in the creative content and operations," the filing states, "including but not limited to concept origination and development, script writing, directing, video editing, posting finished videos to the channel and market research and analysis, among other things."
This suit also seemingly confirms previous rumors that Shelesh did not create her video game content herself, and instead reacted to gameplay footage created by Young.
"Most notably, the gameplay footage depicted on the 'SSSniperWolf' YouTube channel was played and recorded by Young while Shelesh merely read and reacted to the gameplay according to those certain concepts and scripts prepared by Young," the suit alleges.
Young is seeking at least $15,000 in attorney's fees and other punitive damages.
Shelesh has been at the center of controversy on YouTube in recent months, as creators on the platform have debated whether it's ethical for reaction channels to produce content on the platform.
YouTuber Jacksfilms (real name Jack Douglass) took to the platform in July to
accuse Shelesh of "freebooting," which is a form of piracy in which a creator earns money from sharing a video they did not produce and do not have the rights to.
In the video, Douglass claims that Shelesh and her team made a name for themselves by reuploading viral TikToks and YouTube videos without the proper consent from their creators.
"That means there’s no way to find and support the original creators here,” Douglass alleged in the 11-minute video. "All of the views and all of the revenue goes straight to SSSniperwolf."
Shelesh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ol girl lowkey paved the way for the gamer/streamer thots of today. Even going so far to faking gameplay. Now these thots Today doesn’t even have to fake gameplay. Or play games at all lol just look good. I’m surprised more BW aren’t taking advantage of this hustle. But then again them spaces are racist af. I think Jazzyguns is the only big black gamer chick I know of.
