Rippling sues Deel over spying
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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.
I'm not so sure, this is very damning
Really worth the full read.
Absolutely agree, although it's around an hour's read.
Into the void I say: There's a typo on page 39 (of the PDF; the bottom of the page says 37) line 1. That item should be item 4 since it comes after another item 3.
(page 12 also has "at which the Rippling would be offering those solutions" which should probably be just "Rippling", I suspect it said "the Rippling platform" before being corrected to "Rippling" but forgetting to remove "the")
> In part to ensure that the confidential information in Rippling’s Slack channels is used only for authorized purposes, Rippling employees’ Slack activity is “logged,” meaning every time a user views a document through Slack, accesses a Slack channel, sends a message, or conducts searches on Slack, that activity (and the associated user) is recorded in a log file.
"security startups that "monitor for corporate espionage"" imply introducing yet another third party that literally has access to all the things (or logs thereof) thereby introducing a nice fat pwn factor for everyone
The keyword you're looking for is "data loss prevention", it's a thriving market.
> So, to confirm Deel’s involvement, Rippling’s General Counsel sent a legal letter to Deel’s senior leadership identifying a recently established Slack channel called “d-defectors,” in which (the letter implied) Rippling employees were discussing information that Deel would find embarrassing if made public. In reality, the “d-defectors” channel was not used by Rippling employees and contained no discussions at all. ... 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—proving beyond any doubt that Deel’s top leadership, or someone acting on their behalf, had fed the information on the #d-defectors channel to Deel’s spy inside Rippling.
I am sending legal letter to someone warning them that I have dirt on them AND am also mentioning where the dirt is. And that didn't ring any warning bells to Deel's management? Just wow, if true. If they are truly this incompetent, they have no business doing corporate espionage.
I suspect that criminality is correlated with stupidity, but that doesn't make all criminals stupid.
E.g. scammers based in non-extradition territories may be making a savvy career choice, if we ignore matters of conscience.
I have insufficient information to assess the level of risk, but I believe corporate espionage has been successful in the past (hello cold war, hello China).
These particular people may have dropped a bollock, but that doesn't mean that crime cannot pay.
Presumably it was a letter on another topic say an accusation about Rippling poaching Deel’s employees.
Rippling’s legal counsel sends a letter back saying “we aren’t poaching, there are plenty of Deel employees are looking to leave based on posts to Twitter and Slack discussions such as those in the “d-defector” channel.”
He was clearly willing to take risks.
I have to say, I think if this was just limited to the Slack previewing behavior, it's unlikely it would have been caught. Previewing Slack channels is not particularly unusual or suspicious behavior and many people, probably most, don't even think of it as being something that'd be logged. (I personally didn't think of it until reading this post, but in retrospect, of course it is. Everything is.)
Crossing the line into dumb things like Deel executives personally contacting the spy's subordinates via their personal phone numbers, which he had no way of knowing is like sending up a massive flare of weirdness. I'm not saying loyalty to one's employer is everything, or even particularly important, but if I was randomly headhunted by a C-level from a direct competitor, who I had never spoken to or expressed interest in, I'd be pretty suspicious, and I'd find it underhanded. I might mention it to someone.
Supposing the allegations are substantially true, I wonder why Deel felt comfortable going that far. Maybe underestimation of competition?
Not cheap, but worth it for sure considering how much time they save you.
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.
My company uses it. When you work for a company that uses Rippling, you are “co- employed” by both your company and Rippling. Your company does everything as far as hiring, firing, HR, management, etc.
But as far as taxes, insurance and benefits, you “work for” Rippling. It allows small companies to have the benefits of a larger company. Your company pays the PEO per head. It also serves as an SSO provider. Another startup I worked for in the past used Insperity.
Edit: noticed you said insurances, is PI included?
I prefer smaller employers (500 or less) but this is pretty fantastic. I've worked for a Fortune 500 employer with a solid, expensive-but-generously-subsidized healthcare plan, a tiny employer with expensive coverage that wasn't all that great but I've never been able to select from three different providers with a few options a piece.
It was a "killer feature" for me. My family has low-to-moderate medical needs, I like HSA eligible PPOs if the deductible/cost is right. I was able to find three plans that were taken by my family's specific specialists where I could max out the HSA deduction and pay less than half what I had at the last "typical employer plan" company.
This came too late for the Dental side of things -- I would have saved a couple grand per child on braces by purchasing the "Cadillac Plan" even with the two-year lock-in. The last three employers all had plans that seemingly no dentist on Earth is "in network" for and from insurance brands I've never heard of.
There's other upsides -- working at BigCo, we received various discounts at specific car rental companies/hotel chains that the company negotiated discounted rates in exchange for preference for business travel.
I haven't looked into what my company is doing, fully, yet, but it sounds like we have a subset of some of those features, too. We're around 150-200 people (I think) but this is the most comprehensive and reasonably priced benefits offering I've ever seen.
> 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.
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
Sales driven companies are all corrupt and corrupting. This kind of espionage is common, as is outright bribery of buyers.
[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.]
(Also, it's hard to call Deel undifferentiated since they were first to market on this product.)
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.
hilarity ensues
Simple rule of thumb is never trust an Israeli company with your data or your customers' data.
In general though, what would you expect from young people who spent years in high-tech heavy SIGINT unit to do?
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
Also, they're listed on https://www.israelitechalternatives.com/company/deel/
maybe the they got to the paranoid and induced chest pains so they could never share their saying?
> 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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sounds like this came from Deel's PR team. Care to elaborate?
This type of baseless accusation reeks like what Zenefits did to Conrad.
You're probably joking but it's hard to tell with all the "contrarians" and "devil's advocates" out there.
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?
Nobody likes the conditions working in places that have to take counterintelligence seriously.
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?
Or, if that one hits you with a paywall, https://kill-the-newsletter.com/feeds/q8hb21183k12fmnv/entri... should work for a few days.
I really have a boring life...
Black ICE, netrunners and rogue AIs will soon be added to the mix.
Off to re-read Neuromancer, so far ahead of its time.
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.
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.
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.
Deel was founded in 2019 and, in Rippling's opinion, began competing with Rippling in 2022.
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.
Did you also think YC was perfect?
There's a history of gloating here. So much so they named a podcast "The Social Radars."
Back to the point: they should consider re-evaluating their admission process. Heads down coding, talking with users, selling -- choose two. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt9dnFp1M0E
I thought that's a core tenet of angel investing? Maybe not purposefully funding rivals, but funding many ventures with the knowledge many will fail while a few rise.
If the allegations are true, it's insane. But also feels a bit boy cried wolf.
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
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."
What could have been exaggerated in the honeypot story? That seems pretty damning and they would be able to provide evidence to back it up (e.g. Slack access logs and the email).