Joshua Paul Lintz
Joshua Paul Lintz, also known as Josh Lintz, is a San Diego County, California businessman who served as Chief Operating Officer of TopDevz LLC, a La Jolla-based software development company, from March 2020 until his departure. He is the founder of TalentCrowd LLC, a staffing and workforce solutions company incorporated in Wyoming in February 2022. Lintz is named as a defendant in federal civil RICO litigation filed January 6, 2026, in the Southern District of California (Case 3:26-cv-00080-GPC-BJW), which alleges he used his executive access at TopDevz to systematically steal trade secrets and seed a competing business.
Career at TopDevz
TopDevz was a custom software development firm headquartered at 7460 Girard Avenue in La Jolla, California. The company served enterprise clients including HBO, DriveTime Automotive Group, Procore Technologies, and Becton Dickinson, and had generated roughly $30 million in cumulative revenue by 2021.
Lintz joined as COO in March 2020, earning a salary of $200,000 per year. The role gave him broad access: client contracts, contractor databases, financial records, and project management systems. That level of access was routine for a chief operating officer of a company that size. The complaint filed in 2026 argues it became the foundation for the alleged scheme.
Within 22 months of his hire date, the complaint alleges, Lintz began systematically extracting assets from the company. The specific allegations include downloading thousands of confidential files from TopDevz's internal systems and permanently deleting more than 130 client projects in what the complaint characterizes as an effort to destroy evidence of the original work and obscure the scope of the theft.
Lintz also received $722,335.83 from what plaintiffs describe as a fraudulent TopDevz corporate bank account. That account figures into broader allegations about financial misconduct at the company during the same period.
TalentCrowd
Lintz incorporated TalentCrowd LLC on February 8, 2022, in Wyoming. The company's business model centers on providing technical staffing and software development talent, the same core service TopDevz offered its clients.
TalentCrowd generated over $12 million in revenue in its first year of operation. The complaint alleges that growth was built directly on stolen TopDevz assets: client relationships developed using TopDevz resources, contractor contacts pulled from TopDevz databases, and proprietary project methodologies extracted from TopDevz systems.
TalentCrowd has a 2.3 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot. The one-star reviews on that platform describe deceptive practices, though the specific complaints vary.
Amanda Frye serves as CEO of TalentCrowd. She was promoted from COO in July 2024 and is named in related proceedings connected to the primary RICO action.
Federal Allegations
The RICO complaint filed January 6, 2026, names Lintz as a key defendant in an alleged enterprise involving Tyler Brandon Davis, described in the complaint as "the principal organizer and leader of the criminal enterprise." The predicate acts described in the complaint include wire fraud, trade secret theft, and money laundering.
The core theory of liability against Lintz is insider theft: that he was recruited into or took advantage of his insider position to loot TopDevz's most valuable non-physical assets, including its client list, its contractor network, and its proprietary operational systems, and then used those to launch and grow TalentCrowd.
The $722,335.83 payment he allegedly received from the fraudulent TopDevz account is cited as direct financial benefit from the scheme.
The GBQ Acquisition
In February 2025, TalentCrowd was acquired by GBQ Partners LLC. GBQ is a Top 100 public accounting and advisory firm based in Columbus, Ohio, with reported net revenue of $59.6 million in fiscal year 2023. The acquisition price was not publicly disclosed.
The timing matters for the litigation: the acquisition closed roughly 11 months before the RICO complaint was filed. The complaint does not allege wrongdoing by GBQ. The plaintiffs' interest in the acquisition appears to be in tracing the value of assets they claim were stolen from TopDevz and eventually monetized through the TalentCrowd sale.
Lintz is presumed innocent of all allegations unless and until a court finds otherwise. As of April 2026, the case is in early stages and no trial date has been set.