Disgruntled ex-CEO allegedly hijacked domain name, caused $1M in damage and tried to sell it for $6,666,666: lawsuit

 

A disgruntled ex-CEO locked his former video game studio out of its own website, knocked employees offline and triggered more than $1 million in alleged losses — then put the domain up for sale for $6,666,666, a new lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Los Angeles, accuses former That’s No Moon Entertainment CEO Michael Mumbauer of seizing control of company-owned domains years after he was fired for cause and using them to sabotage the studio’s operations.

After his 2022 firing, Mumbauer grew “resentful about his termination” and launched a harassment campaign that included threatening a senior executive and their family, the complaint alleges. News of the lawsuit was reported by the gamer news site Aftermath.

“At 6 a.m. on January 6, 2026, Defendant hijacked ThatsNoMoon.com, disabling TNM’s own access to that domain and TNM employees’ ability to e-mail with any external sender or recipient,” the complaint states.

The sudden shutdown left the studio effectively paralyzed, cutting off communications with investors, business partners and job candidates and forcing employees to abandon their normal work to triage the outage, according to the lawsuit.

Visitors who tried to log on to ThatsNoMoon.com were instead redirected to a Swiss travel site, the suit stated.

The bizarre redirect sparked confusion among outsiders, with business partners, gamers and potential hires left wondering whether the company had abruptly shut down or quietly fired key executives who were suddenly unreachable by email, the complaint says.

Mumbauer was terminated “for cause” on Feb. 17, 2022, after the company’s founders and board concluded that his “vision for the company did not align with theirs,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that while serving as CEO, Mumbauer “breached his duty to act in TNM’s best interests,” including by leaking “confidential and sensitive information to the media and to competitors.”

In September 2020, Mumbauer co-founded That’s No Moon alongside three other video game developers: Tina Kowalewski, Taylor Kurosaki and Nick Kononelos.