Dan Price, Former CEO of Gravity Payments, Charged With Rape

The former chief of Gravity Payments rose to prominence with the introduction of his company’s $70,000 minimum salary and a splashy social media presence.

Dan Price, a Seattle tech executive who rose to fame for publicly raising the salaries of his employees and as a progressive social media influencer, was charged with rape on Thursday in Riverside County, Calif., according to court records.

Mr. Price, 40, was indicted last month by a grand jury on a charge of rape of an unconscious victim, according to Riverside Superior Court records unsealed on Thursday. Mr. Price, who voluntarily appeared in court and posted $55,000 in bail on Thursday, is scheduled to be arraigned in January, according to the documents.

The indictment stems from an incident in 2021 when, a girlfriend said, Mr. Price raped her at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs, Calif., after she had said she did not want to have sex, took a cannabis edible and went to sleep. The woman, Kacie Margis, reported the incident to the police the next day. She went public with her story in 2022 as part of a New York Times investigation that found that Mr. Price had repeatedly used his fame to enable a pattern of abuse in his personal life and hostile behavior at his company.

Mr. Price denied the claims, but stepped down as chief executive of his company, Gravity Payments, to “focus full time on fighting false allegations made about me.”

“As I said when these false allegations were reported over two years ago, I have never physically or sexually abused anyone,” Mr. Price said in a statement provided by his lawyer, Vicki Podberesky. He said he would fight the charge.

Ms. Podberesky said, “Nothing has changed in the two years since these allegations were first reported: There is no credible evidence to support this accusation, and Mr. Price categorically denies that he sexually assaulted anyone.” She said they were confident that he would be cleared of wrongdoing.

She added that the district attorney had made arrangements to allow Mr. Price to appear voluntarily in court, without an arrest.

The Riverside County district attorney’s office declined to comment.

Ms. Margis declined to comment. She recently wrote on Instagram about waiting for justice, saying, “I’ve got a voice for telling the truth and no one else is going to silence me.”

Mr. Price garnered international attention in 2015 when he raised the pay of his employees at Gravity Payments, which processes credit card transactions, to a minimum of $70,000, partly through reducing his own salary. He appeared in The Times, on “Good Morning America” and on the cover of magazines.

He lost favor for a time after Bloomberg Businessweek reported that his story about the pay raise had notable holes and that his former wife had said in a TEDx talk that he had abused her, which he also denied.

After lying low for a few years, Mr. Price began building a following on social media around 2019, railing against corporate malfeasance, out-of-control executive pay and gender inequity. Many of the women who went public in The Times with their stories said they had met him online or had been drawn in by his progressive ideas and influence.

In 2022, the district attorney’s office in Seattle charged Mr. Price with misdemeanor reckless driving and assault with sexual motivation in an incident involving another woman, but dropped the case the next year, citing insufficient proof.

This May, Mr. Price announced on social media that he had returned to his company. In recent months he has resumed his progressive posts on LinkedIn and X.

Ms. Podberesky, Mr. Price’s lawyer, has worked on several high-profile cases in Los Angeles. She represented the Church of Scientology in matters related to the rape case against the “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, who was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.