Krish Dasgupta v. Beckett Collectibles, LLC

Declaration of Krishnendu Dasgupta Page 1

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

SHERMAN DIVISION

KRISHNENDU DASGUPTA,

Plaintiff,

vs.

BECKETT COLLECTIBLES, LLC

Defendant.

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CIVIL ACTION NO. 4:23-CV-00838

JUDGE MAZZANT

 JURY TRIAL DEMANDED

DECLARATION OF KRISHNENDU DASGUPTA

1. My name is Krishnendu Dasgupta. I am over the age of 21 years, have never

been convicted of a felony, have personal knowledge of the facts stated herein, and am

competent to make this Declaration and testify to same. I am the Plaintiff in the above styled 

and numbered arbitration. I declare under penalty of perjury that the following is true and

correct.

2. I have an employment history of being VP of Data with ESPN and before that a long 

history at Disney. In May 2021 I met Scott Roskind, Founder and CEO of Noxx through an 

associate. I was hired as Chief Technology Officer (“CTO”) of Noxx with a salary of $125,000 

per year. 

3. In December 2021 Noxx was considered for acquisition by Defendant Beckett 

Collectibles, LLC. The business of Beckett was to buy, sell and trade baseball cards. At that 

time, Noxx went through a technical due diligence review performed by Defendant’s consultants. 

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4. In February 2022 Defendant completed their due diligence and decided they would like 

to purchase Noxx. An Intent to Purchase was agreed to. 

5. In March 2022 Defendant came up with a set of milestones. The milestones were set 

before Noxx had any look at the current Beckett software architecture. Noxx was not allowed to 

get any details until the real closing. So, Noxx added a statement that said milestones were subject 

to agreed and reasonable changes. 

6. In August 2022 Beckett finally indicated that the deal would go through. At this point, 

Noxx had wasted five (5) months in a holding pattern, with no details from Beckett. 

7. In September 2022 Beckett finally bought Noxx for $20,000,000. I was hired as Head 

of Engineering at Beckett with an increased salary of $250,000 per year. I entered into an 

Employment Agreement effective as of March 24, 2022, a copy of which is attached as Exhibit 2

to the motion. I reported to Kunal Chopra, CEO of Beckett. I did a deep dive to lay out a plan 

for integrating the software systems in a 4-6 month integration plan. At this time Beckett CTO 

was Chris Batista (contractor from a consulting company PlainSpoken). He and I agreed that to 

shortcut getting Noxx live, they would use the Noxx system for data, only integrating the “new 

PlainSpoken Data Platform” from Beckett. 

8. In October 2022 the PlainSpoken Data Platform was analyzed for use by me. I learned 

that no one has integrated its use to date, and that they were running on a $2,000,000 a year 

software package that was recommended by a board member’s former company. Beckett’s 

software package had been designed for a military supplier while Beckett’s business was baseball 

cards. Normal standard data platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Google, AWS) use normal 

open source data platforms (as Noxx was on). It was apparent that integrating this crazy platform 

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was going to take some time. Since I and my team team would be the only team using the data 

platform, I had to do lots of debugging and back and forth. (worth noting, after I left, they 

terminated their new data platform that they spent $2,000,000 on, an action which I had 

recommended all along).

9. In October 2022 I and my team had a meeting in Dallas to announce the new structure. 

I was part of the Senior Leadership Team. Previous to this meeting, I was asked by the CEO 

(Kunal Chopra) to create on paper the ideal technical organization and function. I did that. It was 

never commented on except by the head of product, Justin Richmond (“Justin”). He was a 

contractor with no Digital Product leadership experience. He was friends with the Board member 

who had recommended the bad data platform. He also worked at the data platform company. 

Justin sent me an email regarding my organization and structure updates telling me to "STAND 

DOWN." It was aggressive and odd so I shared it with Defendant’s CEO, Kunal Chopra.

10. In November 2022, I was told that the team that supported the data of the expensive

“PlainSpoken Data Platform” was being let go on December 11, 2022. My team still had things 

that needed to be done, so my team prioritized them to make sure things got done. 

11. In December 2022 my team was left using the new data system on their own, being 

told by the person that was put in charge of it (he was a contractor at Beckett) that, "The contractor 

won't be able to help us for some time." At this point, my team created some of their own data 

endpoints in that system to accomplish both their Beckett needs and milestone needs.

12. In December 2022 I and my team were working feverishly (60-70 hour weeks) to get 

their product integrated with the new data system and on the Beckett platform. My team had only 

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been part of Beckett for 90 days, but had already done an amazing amount of work trying to fix 

things that were Beckett problems. 

13. In January 2023 Dave LeBlanc, Head of HR and Julie R. called and informed me that 

I was being terminated. This was an extreme shock to me and other executives. I asked for a 

reason. They said that they would send me an email with reasoning in the termination letter, but 

no cause was alleged in the letter (Exhibit 4).

14. It is obvious from the January 3, 2023, letter to Beckett CEO Kumal Chopra (Exhibit 

3) that in 2023, Defendant Beckett was continuing its reduction in work force, which began on 

December 11, 2023, when Defendant terminated their entire workforce which had been 

responsible for their in-house data management system prior to the Noxx acquisition. Then 

Defendant decided to continue the reduction in 2022 by scheduling the termination of the entire 

Noxx data management team, starting with myself since I was the highest paid at $250,000. 

Exhibit 3 states that the work was being shifted to companies which were affiliates of Defendant 

in India, where a workforce could be employed at much lower costs. Thus, my termination had 

nothing to do with performance because I was terminated just because I was a member of the 

Noxx workforce being terminated as part of a reduction in force. 

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