Three residents of Effingham County, Georgia, have filed a civil racketeering lawsuit against OpenAI, its affiliates and the county officials who approved Project Camellia, the multibillion-dollar AI data center campus planned for the county. The suit, brought under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, accuses the defendants of running a coordinated scheme of fraud, concealment and closed-door dealmaking to push the development to approval before residents understood what was being built next to them.
The filing was detailed by the Effingham Herald and reported by Tom’s Hardware. The plaintiffs are Dr. Michelle Finch-Mincey, Lehman Mincey Jr. and Raymond Carver, who are seeking civil damages.
Who the Project Camellia lawsuit names
The complaint names every member of the Effingham County Board of Commissioners as a defendant: Chairperson Damon Rahn, Forrest Floyd, Roger Burdette, Jamie DeLoach, Elizabeth Helmly and Phil Kieffer.
Also named are County Manager Tim Callanan; Effingham County Industrial Development Authority CEO Brandt Herndon; the IDA itself; OpenAI; Octans GA LLC, the entity operating the data center on behalf of OpenAI; and Savannah Industrial Development LLC, the agency involved in the sale of IDA property to Octans and OpenAI.
Allegations of NDAs and closed-door negotiations
According to the suit, the defendants committed fraud and concealment through non-disclosure agreements and misleading public statements so that residents would remain unaware of the nature of the projects for as long as possible. The plaintiffs also allege a civil conspiracy “to advance Project Camellia through confidential negotiations and closed-door decisions.”
Beyond those counts, the complaint alleges improper land transactions, zoning violations and civil racketeering. The residents say the county sought to secure the land, tax incentives and zoning approvals without informing the public until key decisions had been finalized and contracts signed.
On damages, the plaintiffs argue the project has harmed their property values, and point to purchase offers for nearby residential properties that they say have dropped or been withdrawn since the data center was announced.
A $30 billion build across five phases
Project Camellia is one of OpenAI’s biggest data center projects planned for construction, and Effingham County is its intended home. The site is expected to cost somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion and to be built across five phases, with a planned compute capacity of 3.2 gigawatts.
OpenAI has made two specific commitments about the campus. The company said the project will not affect the community’s utility costs because it will pay for the full cost of all its required infrastructure upgrades, and that it will have minimal water use thanks to a closed-loop water system.
Those pledges have not settled the dispute. The opposition described in the lawsuit centers less on the engineering claims than on the process: how the land, the incentives and the zoning approvals were allegedly assembled out of public view.
Why a Mafia-era statute applies in Georgia
The RICO Act — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — was originally conceived as a way to counter organized crime, particularly Mafia leadership, who often used low-level members to commit individual crimes and do the dirty work for them.
Georgia’s version of the statute is less stringent than the federal one, which is why it has been used repeatedly in cases with no connection to organized crime. It was the basis of the 2023 election racketeering case against Donald Trump and 18 others over the attempt to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election results in the state, and it was used in Young Thug’s trial after the rapper was accused of running YSL Records as a criminal street gang.
Critics argue the Georgia law is too encompassing and has been used to squeeze defendants involved in more mundane or common felonies.
“When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Georgia State University professor of criminal justice and criminology Volkan Topalli told Atlanta Magazine.
NDA disputes stretch beyond Effingham County
The friction over secrecy in the Georgia case is not isolated. There have already been multiple complaints about data center developers and local governments using non-disclosure agreements while negotiating terms for possible projects.
Developers say the agreements are necessary to avoid “running afoul of insider trading rules.” Opponents counter that the practice is not unavoidable, pointing out that West Feliciana Parish in Louisiana closed a data center deal without resorting to one.
A separate case has drawn similar scrutiny in California. An AWS AI data center in Gilroy came under criticism after residents only discovered the nature of the project when construction began, following a five-year permitting saga that relied on zoning rules set 45 years ago.
Where the case stands
The Effingham County suit is a civil action seeking damages rather than a criminal prosecution, and the allegations against OpenAI, Octans GA LLC, Savannah Industrial Development LLC, the IDA and the named county officials have not been tested in court. As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the plaintiffs contend the alleged violations were part of a coordinated scheme to get Project Camellia approved.
