Lawsuit: Snapchat showed investors false user statistics

LOS ANGELES - A former Snapchat employee said in a lawsuit that the company misrepresented its financial state while recruiting him and then pressured him to spill secrets about his time at Facebook.

Anthony Pompliano worked in Snapchat's business operations department for three weeks before his firing in September 2015. He alleged in court papers Wednesday that the company has lied about the reason for his termination since then, hindering his ability to land another job in the social media industry.

'Mr. Pompliano was terminated because he refused to participate in a scheme to deceive the public and artificially inflate Snapchat's valuation in anticipation of its” initial public stock offering, the lawsuit states.

Company spokeswoman Mary Ritti said the complaint was meritless.

'It is totally made up by a disgruntled former employee,” she said in a statement.

Snap Inc., the company behind the popular chat app Snapchat, recently began talking to investors about its plans to publicly list shares as early as March. The IPO could value Snap at more than $25 billion while raising around $4 billion for the Los Angeles company to invest in hiring, product research and other initiatives, sources have said.

But concerns about the lawsuit could become a distraction, particularly because it calls into question the data the company shares about itself.