Jurors handed Megan Thee Stallion a sweeping victory Monday in her defamation lawsuit against Milagro Gramz, the blogger she accused of coordinating with Tory Lanez to spread “hateful rumors” and promote a deepfake pornographic video featuring the “Lover Girl” rapper without consent.
After two days of deliberations, jurors in Miami federal court found Gramz liable for defaming Megan, intentionally inflicting emotional distress by coordinating with Lanez, and boosting the reach of the sexually explicit deepfake video, Rolling Stone confirms. The jury awarded the musician, born Megan Pete, $75,000 in damages. Under Florida law, Cooper’s liability for the video’s promotion also puts her on the hook for Megan’s legal fees in the case, which are expected to top $1 million, according to a source.
The Grammy-winning rapper sued Gramz, whose legal name is Milagro Cooper, in October 2024. She accused Cooper of being a “longtime mouthpiece” for Lanez, the musician convicted of opening fire with a semiautomatic weapon and wounding Megan in both feet in July 2020. According to the lawsuit, Cooper “conspired” with Lanez to claim Megan perjured herself at Lanez’s criminal trial and is a mentally incompetent alcoholic. Megan alleged Cooper also promoted the deepfake video, which artificially depicted Megan engaged in sexual acts, to her more than 100,000 followers on social media.
In her lawsuit and over several days on the witness stand in Miami, Megan claimed Cooper and Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, maliciously spread rumors about her as retribution for her testimony against Peterson. Megan said the online vitriol pushed her to the brink. She did not allege that Cooper created the deepfake video, but jurors saw evidence that Cooper “liked” the video on her @MobzWorld account on X, on June 8, 2024, and then urged her followers to “go to my likes,” where it was viewable.
“I know it’s not me, but to be in front of everybody else, and they have to watch it — it’s really embarrassing,” Megan testified on Nov. 20, according to NBC News. Megan claimed Cooper knowingly amplified the reach of the fake video online, causing her severe emotional distress.
“To this day, I feel a little, like, defeated,” Megan told the jury. “Because no matter if the video was fake or not … [Cooper] wanted it to be real.” She said Cooper’s alleged harassment “created a space for a lot of people to come speak negatively about me,” according to ABC News. She said Cooper calling her a liar, “a professional victim,” and mentally unstable took a serious toll. (Megan’s close friend, Travis Farris, reportedly testified that after the video spread online, the rapper’s mental health plummeted, and she sought help for depression at a therapy center that cost $240,000 a month.)
“I felt like nobody cared that I was shot,” Megan testified. “I know everyone was making jokes about it.” She described feeling so despondent at one point, she questioned the value of her life.
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“There was a time that I genuinely didn’t care if I lived or died,” she said, according to ABC News. “I felt like no way I mattered. No way I should even be living. I don’t want to be here. I’m tired of waking up. I just wanted to die. I was so tired of being alive.”
Megan said she’s convinced Peterson’s camp prompted Cooper to call her an alcoholic with a family of alcoholics. “Again, I don’t know Milagro, and Milagro doesn’t know me, and a lot of my family is deceased. …So why do you sound so sure talking about my family?” Megan testified, according to Legal Affairs and Trials.
Cooper was called to the witness stand last week and reportedly told jurors she offered commentary about the 2020 shooting and 2022 trial without any outside influence from Peterson. She reportedly claimed she did speak with Peterson directly at least once, when she asked him to be a guest on her channel. She admitted she received money from Peterson’s dad, Sonstar Peterson, but she said the payments were for “personal” matters, such as her kids’ birthdays, or “promotional” work, ABC News reported. Cooper, who lives in Megan’s hometown of Houston, claimed her commentary about Peterson’s trial was protected by the First Amendment.
Peterson, 33, is currently serving his 10-year prison sentence in California. Megan’s lawyers attempted to depose him three times for the civil case, but he repeatedly refused to answer basic questions, including how he first met or came to know Cooper. Shortly before the Miami trial started, he was held in contempt and fined $20,000 for “his obstruction of plaintiff’s multiple attempts to depose him,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid wrote in a ruling filed Nov. 16 and obtained by Rolling Stone. Peterson previously was ordered to pay Megan’s legal fees after he was combative and feigned ignorance of basic facts during a videotaped deposition in April.
Peterson declined to testify in his own defense at his criminal trial, which ended with his conviction on all three felony counts. He appealed the conviction, but California’s Second Appellate District recently rejected the effort to overturn the jury’s verdict and the judge’s sentence.
Cooper’s alleged ties to Peterson were mentioned in Megan’s related petition for a restraining order against Peterson sought last December. At a hearing in January, Megan gave similarly emotional testimony. “I haven’t been at peace since I been shot, and I’m just trying to be unharassed, not only by the person who shot me, but by the people he’s been paying to continue to harass me,” Pete testified under oath. “I probably won’t ever have my own peace about the situation, but I just really want the harassment from the person who shot me to stop.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Richard Bloom granted the request, giving Megan a five-year restraining order against Peterson. The judge cited “several uncontroverted facts” in his ruling, including “conduct that culminated in [Lanez] shooting approximately five rounds at petitioner that resulted in injuries to her.” The judge said Peterson must stay at least 100 yards away from Megan and refrain from harassing, intimidating, or threatening her in any way until at least Jan. 9, 2030.
During Peterson’s criminal trial, jurors heard testimony that Peterson pointed a handgun at Megan’s feet and fired while saying, “Dance, bitch.” The chief resident of orthopedic surgery at Cedars Sinai Medical Center walked jurors through X-rays of Megan’s feet and said doctors identified four metallic bullet fragments embedded in her flesh and removed what they could.
Jurors also saw evidence that Megan’s former best friend Kelsey Harris, who was a witness to the shooting, texted Megan’s bodyguard five minutes after the incident in an emergency call for assistance. “Help / Tory shot meg / 911,” the three-line text shown to jurors said. Beyond that, the judge also allowed prosecutors to play a recorded jail call that Peterson made to Harris shortly after the shooting. He blamed alcohol and said Megan was “probably never ever gonna ever talk to me ever again.” In a subsequent text to Megan, he wrote, “I know u prolly never gone to talk to me again. But I genuinely want u to know I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart. And I was just too drunk. None the less shit should have never happened and I can’t change what did. I just feel horrible. Cuz I genuinely just got too drunk.”
A man who lived on the residential street where the shooting occurred, Sean Kelly, became prosecutors’ star witness when he testified that he woke up to the sound of an argument on the street outside his Los Angeles residence. He recalled looking out a window and seeing two women arguing and physically fighting next to a car.
Kelly never saw a gun, he testified, but he believed one of the women fired at least one shot because he saw a muzzle flash that seemed to come from her direction. Kelly told jurors he later saw a “very agitated” short man “firing everywhere.” At the time the shots were fired, the man had an object in his hand with his arms outstretched, Kelly testified.
In her testimony last week, Megan said she believes Kelly initially mistook Peterson for a woman. She reportedly told jurors she’s nearly six feet tall, while Harris is less than five feet. “Tory Lanez is about 5’2’, 5’3’, and was very petite at the time, which is why people probably thought that two women were fighting,” she testified, according to Legal Affairs and Trials. “If he know he saw two women fighting, that would be one thing. He thought he saw two women fighting,” Megan said.
As Rolling Stone reported during the criminal trial, Harris also texted Megan hours after the shooting, claiming Peterson had attacked her. “Should I get a scan at urgent care? My chest is hurting. …My left side, back and neck hurt, but that’s from the fighting and him dragging me out of the car by my hair,” the text shown in court said.
Last week at the Miami civil trial, Cooper’s former live-stream moderator, Amiel Holland-Briggs, reportedly testified that he advised Cooper against branding Megan a liar. He purportedly said Cooper’s approach to the trial went off the rails after she spoke with Peterson and his dad. He said the narrative she started spinning went “in a direction that I did not like,” and it felt like Gramz was building a “cult-like” following. “It’s almost as if somebody turns their brain off and they decide to not do their own logical thinking,” he said, according to Legal Affairs and Trials.
From Rolling Stone US
