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Rippling sues Deel over spying
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- frankfrank13 2y agoHonestly insane if this ends up being true. Companies of course do research on their competitors, often leaning on employees who have left, current customers, investors, etc. But how [if true] Deel RECRUITED A SPY is so far beyond what anyone in 2025 should deem normal.
- frankfrank13 2y agoSome banks/hedge funds/PE firms etc have ENTIRE internal groups dedicated to figuring out what their competitors are doing. Thats basic game theory! This is not that, and that anyone at Deel thought they would get away with this (if true) is nuts.
- winterbloom 2y agowhy shouldn't this fall under "all's fair in love and war"
- relistan 2y agoIn many countries, the theft of trade secrets is a serious crime. In the US, for example, it carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a $5M fine. It’s unclear to me why this is a civil suit. It may have to do with the alleged activity taking place overseas.
- ianhawes 2y agoIt's a civil suit now, but has most likely been referred to the DOJ and US Attorney's Office for criminal investigation. Best case scenario for Rippling: within 6 months the Deel board boots out the CFO & CEO. Shortly thereafter, several people involved on the U.S. side (and potentially their Irish spy) will be indicted for criminal violations of the Economic Espionage Act (notably Rippling has sued Deel for violating the Defend Trade Secrets Act, which provides for civil remedies). In their lawsuit, Rippling has classified their Sales and Marketing Strategy as "trade secrets" which is something that Deel will dispute given that marketing is inherently public. How that plays out criminally is another story, but chances are once the FBI digs into the Deel internal messages, they will find incriminating evidence. 1 or 2 of the Deel executives will plead guilty to conspiracy charges and get 1 year and 1 day. Deel, the corporation entity, will enter into a deferred prosecution agreement. It's buried in the lawsuit, but Deel is implicated in sending payments overseas to Russia ostensibly in violation of international sanctions. In the Biden administration, this would have definitely interested a US Attorney, but not so much in this administration. Whether it has changed Rippling's strategy vis-à-vis best way to hurt Deel is another story. Perhaps they saw the possibility of Deel not facing punishment or press coverage over the Russia sanctions issue precisely because of the administration change and decided to play their other card: a spy. Best case scenario for Deel: they covered their tracks internally by using auto-deleting Signal and theres no actual evidence of executives dictating what their alleged spy should be doing. They settle the lawsuit for several million dollars and politely apologize to Parker. Maybe there is a countersuit somewhere? Rippling has pursued this aggressively and confidently which hints that maybe there is some level of projection (i.e. they also had a spy in Deel). As for the criminal charges, if it gets to the point of an indictment of a C-level person, they will have lost, so Deel will need to hope someone low level was involved to pin it on.
- baskinator 2y ago> Rippling has pursued this aggressively and confidently which hints that maybe there is some level of projection (i.e. they also had a spy in Deel). Sounds like this came from Deel's PR team. Care to elaborate? This type of baseless accusation reeks like what Zenefits did to Conrad.
- ksynwa 2y agoBecause that is not a statute
- andrelaszlo 2y agoWhere, then, do you draw the line? I don't get your comment lol. Kidnapping is fair, as long as it's a competitor? You're probably joking but it's hard to tell with all the "contrarians" and "devil's advocates" out there.
- no_wizard 2y agoI don’t feel sorry for corporations being spied on by each other. They do this to their own employees to exert control and the general public to make a buck all the time. I couldn’t care less about this. Honestly the shit corporations pull on the daily in 2025 shouldn’t be considered normal. Why should I be worked up about this?
- no_wizard 2y agoAnyone want to take a stab at actually answering my question and giving me any reason to change my view?
- Eridrus 2y agoBecause it creates bad incentives and workplaces. Nobody likes the conditions working in places that have to take counterintelligence seriously.
- no_wizard 2y ago>Because it creates bad incentives and workplaces There are already bad incentives and workplaces. They exist irregardless of this. What exactly does it create in this regard? >Nobody likes the conditions working in places that have to take counterintelligence seriously. Is there any backing evidence that can be produced about this assertion? Counter intelligence is also fairly vague and could mean a wide variety of things. Is there any specifics?
- Eridrus 2y agoYou can probably think of some yourself. Or you can continue being obtuse, up to you.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mattzito 2y agoIf you have a few minutes, reading the full complaint is worth it - the blog posts and the articles don't really do the whole story justice. There is extremely damning evidence that this unnamed individual ("D.S.") in Ireland was acting at the behest of Deel senior leadership, including: - the COO of deel reached out to a rippling payroll manager on linkedin to recruit them. The rippling employee didn't respond. Shortly thereafter, D.S. pulled up that employees personnel record in the HR system that has their unlisted phone number. Shortly after THAT, the COO of deel reached back out to that employee via WhatsApp and that phone number. - The information was about to publish a story about Deel potentially violating sanctions. New information in the article was that at least one of the customers involved was a company called "tinybird". No one at rippling was aware that this company even existed, but a week BEFORE the article came out, but after the reporter had been asking questions of Deel, D.S. started searching Slack for "tinybird" (and there were no other searches of "tinybird" across the whole company) - Around the same time, the reporter for the information reached out to rippling and had internal Rippling slack messages about potential similar sanctions violations. A short time before that happened, D.S. was suddenly searching for "russia", "sanctions", "iran", etc. - There was an email between D.S. and the ceo of Deel, along with an introduction to someone from the family VC fund. - And then, of course, the honeypot - a fake channel, fake chats from the Rippling CRO, but the chats had real stories that former Deel employees had alleged. Email sent to only the CEO of Deel, his dad/chairman of the board, and their GC. Just a short time later, D.S. was searching for the fake channel, trying to find it, adn trying to find these chat messages. I'm sure the CEO will try to have plausible deniability, that it was someone else in his org that he delegated investigating these things to, he had no idea, etc. But if they can get D.S. to crack and share the details of what happened, I think it will be tough to toe that line.
- frankfrank13 2y ago> I'm sure the CEO will try to have plausible deniability I'm not so sure, this is very damning
- duskwuff 2y agoIt certainly is damning - but there's no upside to Deel in admitting to their actions, either.
- ridruejo 2y agoAs the old saying goes … “The fact that you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out there to get you”
- fireburning 2y agowho says that? i have never heard the saying maybe the they got to the paranoid and induced chest pains so they could never share their saying?
- dustincoates 2y agoIt's the Martha Mitchell Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect > Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, United States Attorney General in the Nixon administration. When she alleged that White House officials were engaged in illegal activities, her claims were attributed to mental illness. Ultimately, however, the facts of the Watergate scandal vindicated her and garnered her the label "The Cassandra of Watergate".
- gukov 2y agoRippling blog post: https://www.rippling.com/blog/lawsuit-alleges-12-billion-unicorn-deel-cultivated-spy-orchestrated-long-running-trade-secret-theft-corporate-espionage-against-competitor https://www.rippling.com/blog/lawsuit-alleges-12-billion-uni...
- NetOpWibby 2y agoYikes! Good ol’ honeypot, works all the time.
- americandev 2y ago[flagged]
- anonymoustrolol 2y agoIsn't this like the third lawsuit Rippling has put up against Deel. There was one for some church thing end of last year, and they made a big stink in 2023 when regulations on prop trading shops changed. If the allegations are true, it's insane. But also feels a bit boy cried wolf.
- blandcoffee 2y agoDid you read the complaint? If the honeypot description is accurate, the wolf is real. The below is from section 5 of their complaint [1]: > Rippling’s General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack channel called “d-defectors,” > In reality, the “d-defectors” channel was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. It had never been searched for or accessed by the spy, would not have come up in any of the spy’s previous searches, and the spy had no legitimate reason to access the channel. Crucially, this legal letter was only sent to three recipients, all associated with Deel: Deel’s Chairman, Chief Financial Officer, and General Counsel (Philippe Bouaziz), Deel’s Head of U.S. Legal (Spiros Komis), and Deel’s outside counsel. Neither the letter nor the #d-defectors channel was known to anyone outside of Rippling’s investigative team and the Deel recipients. Yet, just hours after Rippling sent the letter to Deel’s executives and counsel, Deel’s spy searched for and accessed the #d-defectors channel [1] https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf
- anonymoustrolol 2y agoI know, insane if true. But it seems like Parker is pretty litigious these days, and I guess feels like he's losing? There was a very cringe snake game a couple of months ago where the Deel logo was a snake, which leads me to believe he's not fighting from the point of strength. May fav part: "D.S. was heard ‘doing something’ on his phone by the independent solicitor, who also heard D.S. flush the toilet— suggesting that D.S. may have attempted to flush his phone down the toilet rather than provide it for inspection."
- llamaimperative 2y ago
- phpnode 2y ago@dang is this story getting flagged? It's appeared under various links in the last 24hrs and does not appear to have ever hit the front page despite a bunch of upvotes. This story seems relevant to HN, and given the policy of careful moderation of stories related to YC-companies perhaps it deserves a spot in the another-chance queue?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pbiggar 2y ago[flagged]
- jeffdotdev 2y agoWe had about 75 people hired through deel at one point. I actually complained to them because they were reaching out to my people inviting them to "Deel Events" and sending them marketing emails. Deel is just another tech company that thinks they're entitled to data, you're just a user to them. I hope Rippling wins, and that management team gets put in their place. In the mean time, I'm back to setting up local entities. They took a great idea and ruined trust. When I called them on it they just gave me corporate gaslighting.
- pbiggar 2y agoWe use Plane.com, as they are one of the few companies that support hiring in Palestine. Deel doesn't even list Palestine on their countries page, which tells you a lot about their ethics.
- JustSkyfall 2y agoIt’s nice to see folks in the YC community actually care about genocide for sure :)
- akoculu 2y agoIncredible. So they're openly supporting genocide of Palestinians?
- probably_wrong 2y agoI have never heard of either company before and I'm starting to wonder whether I'm the odd one out. For those as lost as me, a cursory look tells me that Rippling is a "Workforce management system (HR, IT, Finance)" while Deel is a "Payroll, Compliance and HR Solution".
- jeanlucas 2y agoI don't know Rippling, but Deel is widely adopted over here in Brazil for startups hiring international workers.
- skerit 2y agoI use Deel to hire people internationally. It's mostly an EOR company. They promised a lot though, I once thought about moving my entire HR workflow to Deel (even for local employees), but quickly decided against it.
- dablweb 2y agoRemote.com also compete in this space, and they have a pretty good UI and customer service. Not cheap, but worth it for sure considering how much time they save you.
- xtracto 2y agoAs someone outside the US who has worked with several of those companies before. The best one for the employees was Globalization Partners. Of course they were the most expensive. Deel is the opposite: they provide US companies with gray area (or you could even say illegal in some countries) trickstery to reduce cost of employing people.
- swyx 2y agowhat kind of trickstery are we talking, and how much saving can that really get you?
- deleted 2y ago
- ksynwa 2y agoI am curious how they got suspicious of a potential spy in the first place.
- ToValueFunfetti 2y agoA journalist using private slack messages as a source reached out for comment on the story.
- LoganDark 2y agoIn the actual filing, it is shown that a journalist was in possession of screenshots of internal Rippling Slack messages, which is what prompted the investigation.
- pbiggar 2y agoRemember that Israeli companies, including Deel, are mostly founded by members of Unit 8200 who are literal spies. These folks have their formative technical experience being spying on Palestinians in order to keep the occupation going. Simple rule of thumb is never trust an Israeli company with your data or your customers' data.
- sorokod 2y agoAny specific reason you believe that Deel was founded by spies or is your statement based on some general principle?
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoDeel is not on the list here but a lot of companies are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200#Companies_founded_by_alumni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_8200#Companies_founded_by...
- sorokod 2y agoIndeed it isn't. In general though, what would you expect from young people who spent years in high-tech heavy SIGINT unit to do?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Mistletoe 2y agoWhy are you saying it is Israeli? The wiki says it is American? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deel_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deel_Inc. > How did Deel start? What’s your story? I'm originally from France. I lived in Israel, the U.K., the U.S., and Spain. Similarly, my co-founder, Shuo, was born and raised in Beijing. -Alex Bouaziz
- pbiggar 1y agoFrom wikipedia: "Deel Inc. is an Israeli-American outsourcing and human resources company,[3] based in San Francisco, California" Also, they're listed on https://www.israelitechalternatives.com/company/deel/ https://www.israelitechalternatives.com/company/deel/
- pilingual 2y agoI still can't understand how YC funds competing companies. Where is the efficiency in that? You have your portfolio companies wasting time with (alleged) spies and lawsuits. They say they just admit smart people. So 3 friends from MIT get in to YC, and at the first office hours said friends tell the YC partners they are working on a startup that starts startups. Awkward.
- delish 2y agoAs the complaint says on page 4: https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf Deel was founded in 2019 and, in Rippling's opinion, began competing with Rippling in 2022.
- phpnode 2y agoIt’s rarely a case of winner takes all, and in this specific scenario both companies have grown into billion dollar valuations. Seems like it’s working for them, ignoring all the lawsuits
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Centigonal 2y agoRippling and Deel started by addressing different markets. They converged when they realized that there is a need for comprehensive payroll and people management software that's integrated with services like PEO and international staffing.
- pilingual 2y agoI've learned that no one at YC saw this coming. My bad. Also I thought YC was supposed to sniff out jerks, what happened to that? My point was merely that YC is about startups which are all about growth. There is no requirement for innovation. Maybe there should be more scrutiny on the idea of the founders. Don't let in people just because they are formidable and went to Berkeley. Reddit's original idea, ordering via cell phone, was arguably innovative for the pre-smartphone era.
- skizm 2y agoThe best part about this story is the spy, when asked to hand over his phone, decided to hide in the bathroom and lock himself in before storming out of the building refusing to hand it over. > On March 12, Rippling sought and obtained an order from Ireland’s High Court to seize the alleged spy’s phone. When served, the purported spy feigned compliance before “hiding in the bathroom and then fleeing the scene,” the complaint says.
- jacobsenscott 2y agoThis is gold, and hilarious. I get why someone would "spy" on rippling for money, but my god, don't use a phone. And why would you even need to be on prem to do this kind of spying? There are so many better ways.
- The_Blade 2y agoFontaines H.C.
- shadowtree 2y agoI love how Cyberpunk is becoming real. Black ICE, netrunners and rogue AIs will soon be added to the mix. Off to re-read Neuromancer, so far ahead of its time.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agoIf I was young and single I would totally polish my cybersecurity stuff and offer my services to company to hack into other companies. With vibe coding and all of these things becoming more popular it's a dream career for the next 10 to 20 years for a cyber security dev.
- Hammerhead12321 2y agoIsn’t that a crime..?
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y agosimple script kiddie attacks that stopped working in the mid 2000's will suddenly work again for awhile until the Gen AI's "learn" how to write secure code. And by "learn" I mean that should probably stop scraping Stackoverflow comments and using it as a source of truth on how something should be done.
- firefax 2y agoscript kiddies don't use buffer overflows, script kiddies try the top 20 most popular passwords and deface your wordpress. AI might learn to code in rust or whatever, but you'll forever have the human factor inherent in systems administration that makes skidding a valid tactic.
- csomar 2y agoGet paid in crypto and settle in some out-of-law jurisdiction?
- ok_dad 2y agoJesus H. Christ, people are taking the wrong idea from those types of stories! Those are cautionary tales of giving corporations too much power, and letting them take over the government. These stories are meant to show that when a sociopathic entity (a corp), which has one goal of profit above all else, is given power then it will use it without considering the human effects. This type of story isn't even prescient, most of them were written in a way that simply shines a light onto things that today's corps are already doing! These writers weren't trying to excite you, they were trying to warn you. I'm having existential dread that people want to see cyberpunk-like things come to reality.
- flas9sd 2y agofor anyone wanting the Matt Levine delivery on this, it was in his Newsletter yesterday under "Spies in the Sales Slack"
- nfriedly 2y agohttps://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-17/spies-in-the-sales-slack https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-17/spies-... Or, if that one hits you with a paywall, https://kill-the-newsletter.com/feeds/q8hb21183k12fmnv/entries/jzfy54ve6f007pk3m8tj.html https://kill-the-newsletter.com/feeds/q8hb21183k12fmnv/entri... should work for a few days.
- csomar 2y ago> who also heard D.S. flush the toilet — suggesting that D.S. may have attempted to flush his phone down the toilet rather than provide it for inspection. Later that day, Rippling had the plumbing of its Dublin offices inspected, but did not locate any mobile devices. I really have a boring life...
- PhillyPhuture 2y agoThe VCs in DEEL (per Crunchbase): Y Combinator Andreessen Horowitz SV Angel General Catalyst Spark Capital Soma Capital Coatue Quiet Capital AltaIR Capital Elad Gil Franklin Templeton Alexis Ohanian Four Cities Capital Emerson Collective Justin Mateen Lachy Groom Neo Altimeter Capital Mubadala La Famiglia Nat Friedman Sinai Capital Partners Firebolt Ventures Y Combinator Continuity Fund Daniel Gross BAM Elevate Avichal Garg Incisive Ventures Ryan Petersen Darian Shirazi Counterpart Advisors Worklife Weekend Fund Recursive Ventures William Hockey Green Bay Ventures Esas Ventures Jeffrey Wilke Roosh Ventures Cem Garih Fresh Ventures Dara Khosrowshahi Nick Raushenbush Jeffrey Katzenberg Bouaziz & Partners Alexandre Scialom Ben Lang Vinay Hiremath Rex Salisbury Terrance McArthur Pierre Bi John Zimmer Anthony Schiller Talal Chedid Raed Malek
- groby_b 2y agoOK, but why is this relevant?
- bschmidt67 2y ago[dead]
- misiti3780 2y agoim sorry, they did what ?
- misiti3780 2y agogetting downvoted for asking a question ... cool
- numbers 2y agoDeel will hold the payment 1-3 days after the company runs payroll: https://help.letsdeel.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4413976907025-When-Do-I-Get-Paid#united-states-of-america https://help.letsdeel.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4413976907025-Wh...
- borski 2y agoNo, they won’t. They’ll hold the pay stub for 1-3 days. Your payment happens on pay day.
- barbazoo 2y ago> Deel tried to charge my employee a fee to get paid on time I used to be employed through Deel and that doesn't ring a bell, how did they charge the employee for getting paid on time?
- jedberg 2y agoInterestingly both are YC companies. Maybe YC can sort it out for them!
- ahstilde 2y agoThis one is probably above 99% of investors' payroll
- jedberg 2y agoOh for sure, I was being tounge-in-cheek.
- fireburning 2y agotime for the most favored activity in the USA: fight clubbbbbbb
- theoryofx 2y agoThis is the logical conclusion of companies with undifferentiated crapware products that compete using aggressive sales teams. Sales driven companies are all corrupt and corrupting. This kind of espionage is common, as is outright bribery of buyers.
- gkoberger 2y agoI can't believe I'm about to defend a HR payroll systems.... but I wouldn't call Rippling or Deel "crapware". We use both; they're boring but necessary products, and they do their job well. [Edit: Added Deel, since we use both! Also hello to the Rippling salesperson who is reading this and is about to reach out to me to convince us to switch.]
- LoganDark 2y agoI think it's Deel that they're calling crapware, because they have to resort to such practices as these
- gkoberger 2y agoWe use Deel, too, and it's not "crap" either. It's boring but that's somewhat the point... how "differentiated" can a payroll system get? (Also, it's hard to call Deel undifferentiated since they were first to market on this product.)
- groby_b 2y agoIf you have a reasonably competent sales team, you don't need "spying", you just ask the customers about their experience with the competitor. Any reasonably company both shops around and is happy to throw one provider under any number of buses if it gets them a better deal with another provider.
- The_Blade 2y agonever spy on your competition using your company email hilarity ensues
- nickphx 2y agoDeel is the worst. I had to use them to be paid as a contractor. This was ok for about two years. Then Deel decided it wanted to force everyone to be paid using their Deel Wallet, a stored balance visa card. The terms and conditions of the Deel Wallet would force arbitration, allowed arbitrary changes to deposit and withdrawal terms and came with a $1000 penalty of one should choose to file a legal claim against Deel Wallet..
- anonu 2y agoOff topic but since we're talking about deel: how terrible is it to deal with deel? I've been on employer side of things and it seems like any exceptions to the rigid workflow breaks the entire process. Customer service is completely helpless in solving your problems. Bugs in the UI persist for years. Random emails asking you to complete tasks for long offboarded contractors. What a load of junk.
- warp 2y agoAs a contractor being paid through deel, I don't have any issues, and it's much more convenient for me than what my employer used before. Useful features have been added over the past few years, though I don't like the most recent UI refresh. I can have multiple accounts in different countries, and configure percentages to be paid out automatically to each of my bank accounts. European tranfers typically arrive almost instantly, to Ecuador typically arrive the next day, sometimes the same day. It's all fairly convenient.
- unknownab12 2y ago[dead]