Deel, valued at about $12 billion, is accused in a lawsuit filed March 17, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California of directing a multi-month campaign to steal a rival’s confidential business information by cultivating a Rippling employee to act as a corporate spy, according to the complaint filed by Rippling.
The lawsuit alleges the agent used Rippling systems to search for the term “Deel” on average 23 times a day over a four-month period and to capture details of Rippling’s sales pipeline, proposed pricing, sales meeting details, communications with prospective customers and internal training materials. The complaint says the spy performed more than 6,000 Slack searches in channels where he had no legitimate business interest.
Rippling says its security team detected the activity and set a honeypot to test who was directing the operation. The complaint says Rippling sent a letter referencing an empty Slack channel called “d-defectors” to three recipients and that, within hours, the Rippling employee searched for that never-used channel for the first time. The filing identifies the three recipients as Phillipe Bouaziz (described in the complaint as chairman of Deel’s board and the father of CEO Alex Bouaziz), Spiros Komis (identified as Deel’s head of U.S. legal) and the company’s outside counsel.
The complaint recounts an episode last Friday when Rippling says court-appointed solicitors confronted the employee at Rippling’s Dublin office and served a court order to turn over his phone. According to the filing, the employee locked himself in a bathroom, was warned not to delete materials and said, “I’m willing to take that risk,” before leaving the premises.
Rippling’s lawsuit says the alleged espionage gave Deel an unlawful advantage by allowing it to intercept and counter Rippling’s sales efforts in real time, preemptively retain customers considering a switch to Rippling, recruit Rippling employees using private contact details and to misuse confidential material in media responses.
Rippling said it will seek compensatory and punitive damages and pursue all necessary legal action to hold those responsible accountable. Alex Spiro, legal counsel for Rippling, is quoted in the complaint saying, “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.” Vanessa Wu, Rippling’s general counsel, is quoted saying, “We’re all for healthy competition, but we won’t tolerate when a competitor breaks the law.”