I 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".
I 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.
If 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.
Absolutely agree, although it's around half 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")
Is it known how Rippling obtained information about D.S.' Slack activity? Does Slack provide this information or did Rippling obtain this information by running third party monitoring software on D.S.' machine?
We 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.
Honestly 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.
Some 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.
In 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.
Isn'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.
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
I 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."
@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?
I am curious how they got suspicious of a potential spy in the first place.
I 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".
I 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.
Remote.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.
I don't know Rippling, but Deel is widely adopted over here in Brazil for startups hiring international workers.
If 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.
link to complaint: https://rippling2.imgix.net/Complaint.pdf
Really worth the full read.
> Really worth the full read.
Absolutely agree, although it's around half 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")
Is it known how Rippling obtained information about D.S.' Slack activity? Does Slack provide this information or did Rippling obtain this information by running third party monitoring software on D.S.' machine?
Slack has a ton of auditing controls built in to the enterprise version: https://api.slack.com/admins/audit-logs-call#channel
Both would be fine? It’s a corp machine. If you find the amount of data disturbing don’t look what MS365/Teams is tracking…
> I'm sure the CEO will try to have plausible deniability
I'm not so sure, this is very damning
It certainly is damning - but there's no upside to Deel in admitting to their actions, either.
We 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.
As the old saying goes … “The fact that you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out there to get you”
Rippling blog post: https://www.rippling.com/blog/lawsuit-alleges-12-billion-uni...
Yikes! Good ol’ honeypot, works all the time.
Honestly 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.
Some 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.
why shouldn't this fall under "all's fair in love and war"
Because that is not a statute
In 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.
Isn'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.
Did 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
I 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."
@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?