An Uber investor has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by six women who have worked with him in different capacities.
Shervin Pishevar, who was also arrested after an alleged rape in London this year, sources say took a liking to one woman in particular at the tech behemoth.
According to several sources who spoke to Bloomberg News, Austin Geidt, Uber’s then head of global expansion, was allegedly inappropriately touched by him during a holiday party in December of 2014.
The party, held at Uber’s chic headquarters in San Francisco, was fuller of staffers and investors. The sources claim the then 40-year-old investor placed his hand on a then 30-year-old Geidt’s leg and moved his hand up her dress, and she squirmed away.
Uber investor Shervin Pishevar is being accused of sexually assaulting and harassing six women
He allegedly groped a Austin Geidt during a holiday party in 2014 when she was Uber’s head of global expansion, she is still with the company and has declined to comment in regards
Pishevar, who is the co-founder and managing director of Sherpa Capital, showed up to the party with a pony on a leash, wearing a Santa hat, and his girlfriend in tow. He said, through his lawyers, that he denied the allegations, and said he and Geidt maintained ‘a friendly, professional relationship.’
He also provided email exchanges from 2015 and 2016 in which Geidt agreed to meet him for lunch and coffee.
Geidt declined to comment on the allegations made by her colleagues regarding Pishevar.
In May of 2017, Pishevar was accused of raping a woman while he was in London at the Ned hotel. He was arrested, and that the allegation was investigated, but that he was never charged.
Pishevar says he was detained briefly and that the assault claim was untrue.
His crisis manager, Mark Fabiani, echoed Pishevar’s statement, telling Bloomberg News that he was detained briefly, and he was informed in July that no further action would be taken in the case against him.
The five other women who spoke to Bloomberg News allege that while working with Pishevar in various capacities, he used his position of power to pursue romantic relations and unwanted sexual encounters.
Pishevar’s representatives said they were confident that the allegations of the five unnamed women ‘will be shown to be untrue.’
An entrepreneur said the investor asked her to dinner to discuss Uber a few years ago and that he started hitting on her. She says she made it clear she was only interested in discussing business.
Pishevar was arrested after he was accused of raping a woman in London earlier this year. The rape charge was essentially dismissed and he denied the allegation against him
The entrepreneur alleges that later in the evening, Pishevar forcefully kissed and groped her.
‘I’m pushing back and trying to talk about anything else,’ the entrepreneur alleges. ‘It is really shady, this baiting and switching that he does.’
A female tech worker reached out to him in 2013 to discuss career opportunities. They met for dinner in San Francisco, but the topic at hand wasn’t discussed, so when he invited her back to his place, she went hoping to get to the point of potential jobs.
She alleges when she got there, Pishevar forcibly kissed her. ‘He basically jumped on me, tried to put his tongue down my throat, and I stopped it,’ she says. ‘I wanted to get career advice, and it was twisted into something else. It was really inappropriate.’
Another woman in 2013, who Pishevar had hired to work for him, alleges he would repeatedly try to pressure her into sex. She says while on a trip, he booked them a single room.
She alleges he attempted to perform oral sex on her in the room, until she convinced him to stop.
‘It felt really wrong, and it was really confusing at the time,’ she says. ‘I just remember his big body on top of me. I was young enough to be his daughter.’ She says one of the few people she told was her sister, who recounted her allegations to Bloomberg News and described the lasting trauma.
Another woman says Pishevar hired her company to do work for him in 2015. He invited her to a party in Los Angeles, in which she claims, he cornered her and forcibly kissed her.
She says she pushed him off, but that in the following weeks, she claims, he repeatedly harassed her.
‘I was so uncomfortable; it was one of the most uncomfortable situations I’ve ever been in,’ she says.
‘He was basically trying to bully me into dating him,’ he eventually gave up. She told a friend at the time, who backed up her alleged account to Bloomberg News.
During a Web Summit in Dublin in November 2013, in which Pishevar spoke onstage with Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk, another entrepreneur said during an after party one night during the conference, she found herself alone on the couch with Pishevar and another man.
‘They start showing me photos of female genitalia,’ the entrepreneur alleges. ‘It became really scary. The other guy was just really, really nasty, and Shervin was just laughing and swiping the photos.’ The woman says she texted a friend who rescued her before anything else happened.