Zeus Network CEO Lemuel Plummer has been ordered to pay $9,826,837 back to the streaming company after a panel of three arbitrators found he paid himself unapproved compensation, sent company money to his father’s church and moved millions through cash withdrawals and payment apps with no receipts. Zeus cofounders King Bach, Amanda Cerny and DeStorm Power filed a petition in Los Angeles Superior Court on Sept. 29 asking a judge to confirm the award and turn it into an enforceable court judgment.
The panel also ordered Plummer to personally pay the three cofounders $1.74 million for their attorneys’ fees and costs, plus interest of 8.25% a year on the damages dating back to October 2022. Their petition puts the total amount at $13,779,781.25 and states the award was issued April 24, 2026. The case is pending before Judge Rupert A. Byrdsong at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, and Plummer has not yet filed a response.
The fight began in October 2022, when King Bach, whose legal name is Andrew Bachelor and who filed through his company Bach Enterprises, joined Cerny and Power in demanding arbitration through the American Arbitration Association. Arbitration is a private process where a neutral panel decides a dispute instead of a judge or jury, and the Zeus operating agreement required it. The three accused Plummer, who runs Zeus as its CEO and manager, of failing to keep proper books, refusing to show them the company’s finances, spending company money on himself, paying himself an excessive salary and cutting off payments owed to members. Arbitrators William D. Johnston, Stephen J. Kane and Glenn J. Waldman heard the case over nine days in July and August 2025.
Most of the money goes to Zeus, not to the cofounders personally. Their main claims were filed on the company’s behalf, so the $9.8 million must be paid into Zeus. That is not the same as Plummer paying himself back. The operating agreement lists Plummer’s stake at 42.67% and gives King Bach, Cerny and Power 16% each, so most of the company belongs to other owners.
Before the panel could look at the money, it had to decide whether the three were owners at all. In sworn answers in January 2024, Lemuel Plummer stated that King Bach, Cerny and Power “were never members” of Zeus because they never paid their capital contributions. The panel rejected that. It pointed to years of Plummer calling them cofounders and partners, an Instagram post wishing Cerny and Bach a happy birthday as Zeus cofounders, a 2021 Breakfast Club appearance where he said they held equity, and the K-1 tax forms Zeus sent them as members from 2018 through 2021. The panel described his testimony on the issue as “at best, confusing and inconsistent; at worst, it was simply not credible,” and ruled in December 2025 that all three were and still are members of the company.
The largest item in the award is $3,467,000. Zeus sent about $3.6 million to third parties through PayPal, Cash App, Venmo, Apple Cash and Zelle, and Plummer’s own expert could find paperwork for only $131,666 of it. The panel ordered him to repay the rest. Cash was handled the same way. Zeus withdrew $1,997,867 in cash, only $23,700 was backed by any record, and Plummer must repay the remaining $1,974,167. According to the panel’s findings, Zeus had one checking account and one debit card, and Plummer was the only person authorized to use that card or sign the company’s checks.
The panel also found Plummer paid himself well beyond what he told his partners he would take. At the start, he said his salary should be between $200,000 and $300,000 a year, and no one objected. The panel found he paid himself $1,436,000 above that without ever discussing it with the other members, as the operating agreement required. He was ordered to return another $770,222 that Zeus paid to L Plummer Media, a company he owns, and $1,006,933 in reimbursements Zeus paid to him directly. Plummer also claimed L Plummer Media had loaned Zeus $905,504, but no loan documents were ever produced, and the panel ordered him to repay $547,515 in so called loan repayments.
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Then there is the church. Plummer directed $625,000 of Zeus money to COGIC Israel, a church led by his father. Jason Tolbert, who later became president of Zeus, supported the payments but testified they had no business purpose. The panel called the payments a misappropriation of company funds.
The award also describes years of the cofounders being shut out. Their side made more than 20 requests for financial records and was told the information was proprietary. During the arbitration, Zeus agreed to hand over documentation for 2,857 specific transactions and produced it for only 525. Bank statements the cofounders had requested years earlier were not turned over until early 2025. The panel said those repeated discovery failures delayed the case and limited the evidence, and it cited them along with Plummer’s bad faith on several claims in shifting most of the legal bills onto him. The cofounders asked for $2,320,123.71 in fees and costs, and the panel awarded $1.74 million, about 75% of what they spent. Plummer must also reimburse Zeus for the lawyers the company paid to defend him and cover 75% of the arbitration costs.
The panel found Zeus has not filed tax returns for several years. Plummer’s explanation was that the returns could not be prepared until the arbitration decided who the members were. The panel called that excuse “without merit” and made Plummer personally responsible for any IRS fines, penalties or interest that result. It also found he stopped sending the cofounders their tax distributions after 2021. Plummer’s legal brief said that happened because they had inflated their follower counts, stopped promoting Zeus and started the arbitration. The panel found no evidence the cofounders inflated their followers, ruled they were never required to promote the company in the first place, and said cutting off the payments reflected a retaliatory motive. Plummer was ordered to keep accurate books, give the cofounders access to the records, send quarterly financial statements and resume distributions.
Plummer also lost his counterclaim. He sought $10,900,904 from the cofounders, arguing that DeStorm Power’s March 2025 video, “Truth About Zeus Networks,” was defamatory and drove subscribers away. The panel found Power made the video after Plummer posted that Cerny was a fraud and that he had founded Zeus alone. Power admitted one statement in the video, that 25 creators he brought to Zeus were never paid, was not accurate because some received small checks. The panel did not decide whether the video was defamatory. It denied the claim because Plummer never proved the video caused the losses he claimed.
The award also includes Power’s account of how his role ended. He testified he served as president of Zeus without pay, edited content for free during the 2018 launch, sold his house and nearly went broke. He was removed as president without notice and replaced by Tolbert, who has called Plummer family. When Power went to the Zeus office, he was met by a security guard, and Plummer called him names.
Plummer did win a large share of the spending fight. The cofounders accused him of misappropriating about $56 million, and the panel awarded roughly $9.8 million. It approved more than $10 million paid to a travel company, nearly $3 million for ground transportation, $2.75 million in private jets, $1.76 million in security, $664,000 in tickets to the 2024 Super Bowl and $420,000 to lease a production house as legitimate business expenses, even though few invoices were produced for most of them. For the rest of the disputed spending, the panel called Zeus’ recordkeeping “woefully deficient” but said there was not enough evidence of actual theft.
The company itself has grown far beyond its 2018 launch. Plummer approached Power with the idea in the summer of 2017, Power brought in King Bach, and King Bach brought in Cerny. The company was originally going to be called The Social Network before becoming Zeus, and it launched July 13, 2018. According to the award, Zeus now has more than 2 million subscribers, and its net revenue grew from $322,894 in 2018 to $8,363,455 in 2024, with gross revenue of $115,297,700 that year.
When Power first went public in 2025, Plummer said the matter was being handled in court and that he would respond there. Under California law, Judge Byrdsong can confirm the award, correct it, vacate it or dismiss the petition, and Plummer has the right to oppose it. If the court confirms the award, the cofounders can enforce it like any other court judgment.
