On Wednesday, Rippling released an affidavit of a wavy employee who testified that he was working as a spy for HR Tech Company’s Arch Rival Deel.
And, coupled with the Rippling lawsuit filed against Deel last week, the account reads like a corporate spy movie script with Sting Operation and Smashed Phone.
The latest escape between the two. TechCrunch has documented the most Hollywood-esque parts of the testimony below, but please note that this is only one side of the story.
Summary: Rippling, a labor management platform, highly publicly announced last week that it was suing Deel over the alleged spy, leveling out claims ranging from the Rico Racketeering Act (often used to indict members of Mafia) to the diversion of secrets of occupational secrets and misappropriation of unofficials into competition.
But at the time it didn’t reveal the names of the wavy employees. That changed on Wednesday when the affidavit was released, signed on April 1st.
Become a corporate spy
According to the affidavit, Keith O’Brien was hired to ripple in the global pay and compliance division of the Dublin office in July 2023.
In early 2024 he interviewed him for his job at Deal, but he didn’t get it, but he testified. The employee later launched a payroll consulting business, pitching deals to work with him, and ultimately said he was planning to stop undulating to work full-time.
Employees testified that Deel founder CEO Alex Bouaziz and Bouaziz’s father Philippe Bouaziz are Deel’s CFO.
O’Brien testified that he offered to pay USD 6,000 for the first payment and later € 5,000 per month for a crypto transaction.
O’Brien testified that he conducted searches for information on Slack, Google Drive and other wavy resources and communicated it to Deel’s contacts via Telecom.
He turned over information on sales leads, product roadmap, customer accounts, superstar employee names, information about approved countries and other requests, O’Brien testified.
The lawsuit alleges that the spies had been in operation for four months, and in just one day he shared information about the rippling demonstrations, hundreds of notes from salespeople about the outlook, and hundreds of companies that requested details about Deel’s customers that Ripples were talking about.
I was caught by a simple trap
O’Brien thought he was carefully wiping out the evidence, but he testified, he discovered that some of the screen recordings he had filmed on his phone had been backed up to his iCloud account, unknown to him.
Rippling says in the lawsuit the company set up a trap to drive out spies by sending threatening legal letters to Deel’s leadership. The letter said he was talking about information that would embarrass Deel if it was published on a slack channel called “D-Defectors.” Slack channels existed, but it was a trick, the lawsuit said.
O’Brien testified that he was instructed to search the D-Deffector Channel, and immediately after he did so, he was told he wouldn’t – it might be a trap.
(Even as a trick, Rippling’s lawyers say something about the relationship between these two companies, even if it is believed.)
However, O’Brien was clearly arrested for searching for that slack channel. On March 14th, when he entered the office, the lawyer confronted him with a court order searching for his device.
He flipped his laptop over, but testified that he hid the phone, ran away to the office bathroom, wiped it into the factory setting and pretended to wash it off.
He later testified to the advice of those who believed he would represent Deal, “destroyed my old phone with an x and lowered the drain in his mother’s house.”
The lawyers tried to stop O’Brien from leaving the office and warned him that he would be called to testify, but O’Brien left anyway, explaining both the lawsuit and the employee.
O’Brien is in panic now and soon exchanged messages with Deal’s CEO and others whom he believes are Deal’s lawyers, the affidavit said. According to the affidavit, one of them even suggested flying O’Brien and his family to Dubai.
During the ongoing interaction, these people advised various authorities to issue statements, saying that ripples promoted payments in Russia and that he was being harassed because he was trying to become a whistleblower.
O’Brien said he went with the idea at first, but testified, “I knew this was wrong.”
He eventually hired his own lawyer, and soon after – after growing the situation – he chose to work with the authorities to “speak the truth,” the affidavit said.
Deel did not respond to requests for comment, and the CEO did not respond to X. However, after the initial complaints last week were filed, Deel told TechCrunch via a spokesman.
“Weeks after the ripples, Ripling is trying to change the story with these sensational claims as they are accused of violating Russian sanctions laws and exploring falsehoods about the deal. We look forward to denying all legal misconduct and claiming counterclaim.”
However, Rippling’s lawyers believe they have “smoking guns.”
“The evidence in this case cannot be denied. The highest level of leadership at Deal is related to the brave corporate spy scheme and is accountable,” Rippling’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, told TechCrunch.
And others are standing up to praise the rippling. Eynat Guez, CEO of another Deel rival of global payments platform Papaya Global, tweeted, “As far as we know, this is not a one-off incident. Thank you for taking @Parkerconrad and ending this practice.”
Interestingly, Ripping’s attitude towards the deal once caused a repulsion in the ripples. Last year, Rippling launched a marketing campaign called “Snake Game.” But ripples were skewered online about it.
Read the full affidavit here.
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