On Wednesday, Rippling publicly released the affidavit of the Rippling employee who testified that he was working as a spy for the HR tech company’s arch rival Deel.
And the account, coupled with Rippling’s lawsuit filed against Deel last week, reads like a corporate espionage movie script, complete with a sting operation and a smashed phone.
It’s the latest escapade between the two. TechCrunch has documented the most Hollywood-esque parts of the testimony below, but be aware that this is only one side of the story — the side Rippling wants everyone to know, as its PR machine has blasted it out, and CEO Parker Conrad tweet-stormed about it.
To recap: Rippling, a workforce management platform, very publicly announced last week that it was suing Deel over this alleged spying, leveling charges ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (often used to prosecute members of the Mafia) to misappropriation of trade secrets and unfair competition.
But at that time, it didn’t reveal the name of the Rippling employee. That changed on Wednesday, when it released the affidavit signed April 1.
Becoming a corporate spy
According to this affidavit, Keith O’Brien was hired by Rippling in July 2023 in the global payroll and compliance department in the Dublin office.
In early 2024, he interviewed for a job at Deel and didn’t get it, but did, he testified, connect with Deel’s founder over LinkedIn. The employee later started a payroll consulting business, pitched Deel on working with him and eventually told them he planned to quit Rippling to work full time on it.
The employee testified that Deel founder CEO Alex Bouaziz and Bouaziz’s father, Philippe Bouaziz, Deel’s CFO, suggested that, instead of quitting, O’Brien spy on Rippling for them.
O’Brien testified that they offered to pay him €5,000 per month with the first payment at US$6,000, and later transactions in crypto.
O’Brien testified that he conducted searches on Slack, Google Drive, and other Rippling resources for information and communicated to his contacts at Deel via Telecom.
He turned over information on sales leads, product roadmaps, customer accounts, names of superstar employees, info on sanctioned countries, and whatever else was asked for, O’Brien testified.
The lawsuit alleges that the spying took place for four months and says that in just a single day, he shared information about hundreds of companies that requested a Rippling demo, hundreds of notes about prospects from sales people, and details on Deel customers that Rippling was talking to.
Caught by a simple trap
O’Brien thought he was carefully wiping evidence, but, he testified, he later discovered some of the screen recordings he had taken with his phone were backed up to his iCloud account unbeknownst to him.
In its lawsuit, Rippling says the company set a trap to out the spy by sending a threatening legal letter to Deel’s leadership. The letter said that Rippling employees were talking about information that would embarrass Deel if made public in a Slack channel called “d-defectors.” The Slack channel existed but it was a ruse, the lawsuit said.
O’Brien testified that he was instructed to search the d-defectors channel and shortly after he did so, he was told not to — that it may be a trap.
(It says something about the relationship between these two companies that Rippling’s lawyer would even send such a letter, even as a ploy, and that it would be believed.)
O’Brien was, however, apparently busted by searching that Slack channel. On March 14, when he went into the office, a lawyer confronted him with a court order to search his devices.
He testified that he turned over his laptop but hid his phone, escaped to the office bathroom, wiped his phone to factory settings, and pretended to flush it.
He later “smashed my old phone with an axe and put it down the drain at my mother- in-law’s house” on advice from people he believed to represent Deel, he testified.
The lawyer tried to stop O’Brien from leaving the office, warning that he would be called to testify, but O’Brien left anyway, both the lawsuit and the employee described.
O’Brien, now panicked, immediately exchanged messages with Deel’s CEO and others that O’Brien believed to be lawyers for Deel, the affidavit said. One of them even suggested flying O’Brien and his family to Dubai, according to the affidavit, because of the extradition policies there.
During ongoing exchanges, these people advised him to make statements to various authorities saying that Rippling was facilitating Russian payments and he was being harassed because he was attempting to be a whistleblower.
O’Brien said he initially went along with this idea, but testified: “I knew this was false.”
He eventually hired his own lawyer, and shortly after that — after growing anxious and ill over the situation — he opted to cooperate with authorities and “tell the truth,” the affidavit said.
Deel did not respond to our request for comment, nor has its CEO responded on X. But after the initial complaint was filed last week, Deel told TechCrunch via a spokesperson:
“Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims. We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims.”
However, Rippling’s attorney believes they’ve got a “smoking gun. “
“The evidence in this case is undeniable. The highest levels of Deel’s leadership are implicated in a brazen corporate espionage scheme, and they will be held accountable,” Alex Spiro, legal counsel for Rippling, told TechCrunch.
And others are rising to applaud Rippling. Eynat Guez, CEO of another Deel competitor, global payments platform Papaya Global, tweeted, “As far as we know, this is not a one-off incident. Thank you @parkerconrad for taking the initiative and ending this practice.”
Interestingly, there have been times when Rippling’s antics towards Deel have caused backlash toward Rippling. Last year Rippling launched a marketing campaign called “Snake Game” that pitted itself against its rival. But Rippling was skewered online about it.