Shaquille O’Neal claims a computer tech he hired, who hid his criminal past, stole his private emails and sold them for profit, then “threatened to use the electronic communications to harm O’Neal unless O’Neal paid [him] twelve million dollars.”

When he refused to submit to these “baseless demands,” O’Neal says, the man filed a “baseless” lawsuit against him.

The NBA great sued Shawn Darling in Miami-Dade County Court.

The complaint claims that Darling “admitted under oath that he twice sold O’Neal’s personal emails to a well known and highly trafficked Internet website.”

O’Neal says he hired Shawn Darling in 2007 as an information technology specialist “who operates at [a] company called Your IT Team LLC.”

He says Darling set up computer and sound systems in his house, and that he “gave Darling the names of his email accounts and passwords so that Darling could perform these services. Darling submitted invoices for these services to O’Neal and received payment.”

O’Neal says he paid Darling from $75 to $150 an hour, and that over the course of the 2 years Darling worked for him, he came to trust him.

“Unbeknownst to O’Neal, at [the] time the business relationship existed, Darling was a convicted felon, having been sentenced in Wisconsin for bank fraud. Darling concealed his criminal past from O’Neal,” the complaint states.

O’Neal says Darling recommended that he set up an Internet server to host an Internet domain to store all of O’Neal’s electronic correspondence. He agreed, and Darling created Big32.com for O’Neal.

But rather than getting O’Neal his own server, Darling hosted Big32.com on his own servers, to get access to everything on Big32.com, O’Neal says.

“Darling also used the passwords O’Neal gave Darling as part of his employment by O’Neal outside the scope of Darling’s employment relationship to access O’Neal’s email accounts without O’Neal’s permission,” the complaint states.

via Courthouse News Service.