The alleged spy confessed his involvement in the operation and directly implicated Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz and his father.
The second episode of the Silicon Valley spy thriller between HR tech platforms Rippling and Deel has dropped — and it’s arguably more explosive than the first.
Two weeks after Rippling publicly accused rival Deel of placing a spy within its ranks — and unmasking and confronting the alleged culprit — former Rippling employee Keith O’Brien confessed his involvement and directly implicated Deel founder and CEO Alex Bouaziz in an Irish court filing made public Wednesday. Philippe Bouaziz, Alex’s father and Deel’s CFO and chairman, was also identified by O’Brien as being heavily involved in the scheme.
O’Brien, who worked at Rippling’s Dublin office as a global payment compliance manager, wrote in a sworn affidavit that Alex Bouaziz directly recruited him to spy on Rippling, offering him 5,000 euros a month for the service.
“Alex told me he ‘had an idea.’ He suggested that I remain at Rippling and become a ‘spy’ for Deel, and I recall him specifically mentioning James Bond,” O’Brien wrote in the affidavit. “I understood what Alex was asking me to do was wrong, and I believe he knew it was wrong too.”
When O’Brien was caught via a honeypot trap set up by Rippling and confronted at work, Deel offered to relocate his family to Dubai.
“They suggested flying my family and me to Dubai that night, saying ‘we all need a holiday,’” O’Brien wrote. “I understood they were suggesting that my family and I flee Ireland permanently and that Deel would put me up in Dubai.”
A private chat
Founded around the same time and located 10 minutes apart in San Francisco, Rippling and Deal were hostile rivals before the allegations of corporate espionage dropped two weeks ago. The firms, fierce head-to-head competitors in providing workplace management software, are both valued at more than $12 billion.
O’Brien wrote that Alex instructed him to provide information on “Rippling’s ‘ways of doing things.’” The two communicated via the secure messaging app Telegram and texted multiple times a day, including at times on weekends.
“He was the only one I transferred information to,” O’Brien wrote, adding that Alex was particularly interested in Rippling’s payroll strategy and expansion efforts. Alex would indicate what terms to search for, and O’Brien would comb through Rippling’s Slack channels, Salesforce database, and Google Drive to find the information, he wrote. Among the keyword searches Alex allegedly requested were “tom brady,” “iran,” and “sanctioned countries.”
O’Brien wrote that he sent Alex “a lot of Rippling confidential information” through screenshots and screen recordings, including a “battlecard” for Rippling salespeople with arguments to make to potential customers about the superiority of Rippling products over Deel’s.
O’Brien also sent Alex profiles and contact information for Rippling employees who were “superstars.” In the lawsuit filed two weeks ago in federal court in San Francisco, Rippling said this is what tipped off company leaders to the possibility of a mole, because Deel tried to hire at least 17 members of its global payroll operations team via WhatsApp, which requires access to phone numbers.
‘The truth will set you free’
O’Brien had a separate Telegram chat with Alex’s father, Philippe Bouaziz, and another with a third person who was referred to as “the Watchman” and had the initials A.D.
When it came time for O’Brien’s monthly payment, he wrote, he would send a picture of a watch to the payment chat, and Philippe would say, “send that watch to London,” then, “the buyer is happy.”
“I understood this to mean that Alex … was happy with my services and the information I had sent him, and that I would be getting paid,” O’Brien wrote.
The first payment O’Brien received was $6,000 wired from the account of Deel COO Dan Westgarth’s wife. Philippe informed O’Brien that all subsequent payments would be made via cryptocurrency to leave “no trace.” From then on, O’Brien received his monthly compensation in Ethereum through his Blockchain.com wallet.
Alex and Deel’s lawyers were sued this week in an Irish court for allegedly obstructing legal proceedings. Deel representatives didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment but said in a previous statement that they deny “all legal wrongdoing” and plan to file counterclaims against Rippling.
Rippling CEO Parker Conrad accused Deel of long-running corporate theft last month in a lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court. | Source:Kimberly White/TechCrunch/Getty Images
“The evidence in this case is undeniable,” Rippling’s legal counsel, Alex Spiro, said in a statement. “The highest levels of Deel’s leadership are implicated in a brazen corporate espionage scheme, and they will be held accountable.”
“Alex allegedly recruited the spy, received the stolen info, and arranged payment,” Conrad wrote.
After O’Brien was confronted last month at Rippling’s Dublin office by a legal officer, he continued cooperating with Deel and had extensive communication with Asif Malik, the company’s in-house lawyer, who made the suggestion that O’Brien and his family flee to Dubai, according to the affidavit. Malik also allegedly asked O’Brien to smash his phone, which he did with an axe and put the pieces down the drain at his mother-in-law’s house.
Days later, O’Brien wrote, he felt “Deel’s support and that of its in-house lawyers was beginning to pull away.”
After receiving a message from a friend saying “the truth will set you free,” O’Brien decided to come clean. “I realised that I was harming myself and my family to protect Deel,” he wrote.
This story has been updated to include a comment from Ripplingon the affidavit.
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