The Tech Sales Newsletter #87: Don’t shoot, I’m in tech sales
This week we continue with the Deel saga.
We've received an extensive testimonial from the individual known as DS (Deel Spy), which divulges the deepest secrets of the affair. The full story that kicked this off has been covered here.
The key takeaway
For tech sales: Resign, before it’s too late.
For investors: Sue, if you want to see any of your money back.
The affidavit of Keith O’Brien
| began working at Rippling in July 2023 in global payroll and compliance. | worked in the Dublin office primarily, and occasionally worked from home.
| interviewed with Deel in or around March 2024 for a senior director of payroll product compliance position | found on LinkedIn. | interviewed with Olivier Elbaz, Deel’s Global Head of Expansion, but | did not receive an offer.
Around that same time, | connected with Alex Bouaziz, Deel’s founder and chief executive officer (CEO),over LinkedIn. | believe he had commented on one of my posts saying we should connect. When| didn’t get the offer at Deel, | reached out to Alex and asked him for feedback.
He said | was an excellent candidate, but from the interview feedback, the presentation that | gave as part of my application was not good enough.
In September 2024, while still working at Rippling, | started a company called Global Payroll Geeks to provide payroll consulting services to businesses. | told Alex Bouaziz about my new business, and he referred me to Dan Westgarth, the chief operating officer (COO) of Deel. We began discussions about Global Payroll Geeks becoming a service provider for Deel.
Keith was a restless fellow who wanted a change. Little did he know that his life was about to take a turn.
In or around the end of September 2024, | let Alex Bouaziz know | was considering leaving Rippling to pursue full time consulting work. Alex suggested that we discuss my career considerations, and we spoke on a WhatsApp call shortly thereafter. That was my first phone call with Alex; previously we had exchanged the occasional message on LinkedIn or WhatsApp.
| took the WhatsApp call with Alex from a meetingroom at Rippling’s Dublin office, while | was at work. Alex told me he “had an idea.” He suggested that | remain at Rippling and become a “spy” for Deel, and | recall him specifically mentioning James Bond. | asked him what he meant.
He said he would offer me a monetary reward if | agreed to spy on Rippling for Deel. | told him | would have to think about it. About thirty minutes later, | called Alex back over WhatsApp and told him that | was onboard with the plan. He turned that call into a three-way call between me, Alex, and his father, Philippe Bouaziz, who is Deel’s chief financial officer (CFO). | had never spoken to Philippe before that call. Alex asked me if | was agreeing to his offer. Once | agreed, Alex said we should move the conversation to Telegram. Before. September 2024, | did have a historical Telegram account which had been dormant for about a year and | then had to reinstall the app. | understood that Alex and Philippe wanted our future conversations to take place over Telegram so that we could engage in secret communications.
The definitive tech sales guide to selling AI (LLMs and Enterprise-grade Machine Learning).
In the original KGB manuals for recruiting agents, there are certain expectations:
Target Selection: The KGB focused on recruiting foreign nationals, diplomats, scientists, government officials, and Soviet emigres. They exploited ideological sympathies, grievances, or mercenary motives. In cases where persuasion failed, coercion, threats, and blackmail were employed.
Recruitment Strategies:
False Flag Operations: Agents were often recruited under the guise of working for other organizations to align with their personal political goals.
Psychological Manipulation: Techniques included persuasion and ideological indoctrination to ensure loyalty.
Agent Management:
Extensive training ensured agents could handle tasks such as intelligence gathering and sabotage. Some were placed as "sleepers" in foreign countries for years.
Regular vetting and testing were conducted to maintain reliability. Troublesome agents were disengaged discreetly to avoid suspicion.
We can assume here that O’Brien will fall under the mercenary motive of recruitment. He was also placed in a good strategic position to conduct his mission. Let’s see how the Deel leadership team handled the important work of agent training and management.
Once we switched to Telegram, we discussed what my reward would be and how | would be paid. Alex and Philippe said | would be paid approximately 5000 euros per month for spying on Rippling for Deel, and that | would be paid around the 6th of each month. | wanted to be paid in fiat currency and asked that payments be made through Revolut, an online payments application.
| Understood what Alex was asking me to do was wrong, and | believe he knew it was wrong too. | asked Alex and Philippe to paper our arrangement with a consulting agreement, so that i would have a seemingly innocent explanation for the additional income | was receiving for spying on behalf of Deel. Alex refused to execute a consulting agreement.
I understood that his refusal was due to the fact that he did not want a documentary record of our relationship. During this initial Telegram call, we also discussed what kind of confidential information Alex wanted me to take from Rippling. In exchange for the monetary reward, Alex told me that | would need to provide him information regarding Rippling’s “ways of doing things” which understood to mean corporate strategy, customer insights and other interesting company information.
Imagine getting paid so little, yet still insisting on paying your taxes. Nothing like the thrill of doing things properly as a payroll mastermind.
In addition to Philippe and myself, the Telegram channel in which we discussed my payments included a third individual who Alex only referred to as “the Watchman.” | don’t know who the Watchman is. | only know that his initials were “A.D.” in the Telegram chat. | did not have any conversations with A.D. on Telegram. As discussed below, | subsequently spoke to an individual with the initials A.D. but | cannot say whether he and “the Watchman” were one and the same person.
Philippe established payment terminology that | was expected to follow. When it was time for me to be paid, | would send a picture of a watch to the payment chat, and Philippe would say “send that watch to London.” Then he would say “the buyer is happy.” | understood this to mean that Alex, the buyer of Rippling’s confidential information, was happy with my services and the information | had sent him, and that | would be getting paid.
The Watchman had to be pleased at all times.
Alex and | communicated multiple times a day every workday, and sometimes on the weekends. He was the only one I transferred information to. Most of our communication was through written Telegram messages, but sometimes Alex and | would exchange voice notes through Telegram as well.
Alex was particularly interested in Rippling’s strategies around global payroll and expansion efforts, as well as reviewing specific sales, marketing information, and customer details. Alex would give me direction for what terms to search on Rippling’s Slack system in order to yield the information he wanted. Alex would frequently message me and say “hi boss!” or “hey boss, can you search for...” to start a conversation. Alex would frequently message me on Mondays with “hey boss, good weekend?”
Now here we come back to the question of "who is responsible". In my previous article, I specifically called out that the specifics of tracking a daily deal flow and updates would require back and forth directly with the line managers and reps themselves.
So logically speaking, there would have been a workflow of individuals within the sales org raising questions to their managers, who would then ping Alex, who would push O'Brien to start searching for information, then forward it back.
If you think about the busy day of a CEO, most of this was probably done with sloppy screenshots and copy-paste of the information back in their Slack channel (or to make it secretive, ping it to the sales leaders over Telegram).
In order to find the confidential Rippling information for Deel, | would search through Rippling’s Slack, Salesforce, and Google Drive. At first, | would type in a search term on Slack, take a screenshot of the results on my phone and then send it to Alex via Telegram. After a few weeks, Alex suggested | start making screen recordings in order to capture more information at once.
| complied and sent the screen recordings to Alex via Telegram. | sent many screen recordings to Alex, but the number would vary from day to day. A big day would have included around six screen recordings. Alex would also suggest variations of searches. For example, | remember he once asked me to search “tinybird,” and then he suggested that | add a space and search for “tiny bird.” Although | regularly deleted many of the screen recordings and screenshots in accordance with Alex’s instructions to be careful, some of them were backed up without my knowledge to my iCloud account, including a 1 minute 34 second screen recording from and a 6 minute and 31 second screen recording from December 20, 2024.
If you spent six minutes watching a recording made by a sweaty Irish man browsing Rippling's systems, and you didn't find this resignation-worthy, you deserve your fate of getting blacklisted in the industry.
He expressed particular interest in the Deel customers that had signed up to receive a demonstration of Rippling’s products. If he would ask for somethingon Deel, | would record a particular Slack channel for him to view. He would also ask me to research and identify examples of Rippling’s pain points. At one point, he asked me focused questions about Rippling’s French products, including key features, pain points, and even specifics around a French customer’s implementation who had left Deel for Rippling’s global payroll product. Another time, he asked me to look into Rippling’s reaction when Deel announced its acquisition of a new company. | also recall a time when he gave mea list of customer names to search within Rippling. | believed that those were either Deel customers or companies that were actively considering Deel as a solution.
The baguettes and company secrets were flowing like no tomorrow.
Among the specific searches that | recall Alex asked me to run were searches for “tom brady,” “iran,” “sanctioned countries,” and “tinybird.”. He also asked me for information on certain Rippling employees, and would ask me to send him the “superstars.” | would provide him with their profiles and contact information. | understood that Alex wanted this information in order to recruit high performing employees from Rippling, and that Deel did reach out to many of my coworkers about working at Deel. | myself did not receive outreach or an offer to work at Deel.
| believe Alex thought | was more valuable to Deel staying in Rippling. Alex and | communicated via Telegramon a near daily basis and often multiple times a day. Sometimes our chats would be personal and discuss sports. For example, | learned that he was a big fan of “PSG,” which stands for Paris Saint-Germain F.C., the football (soccer) team of Paris. He also reached out to me multiple times a day to request information about Rippling. It seemed constant. If it had been a few hours since he heard from me, he would reach out.
Sometimes | would be taking care of personal matters and not responsive to his messages, and he would reach out multiple times. I provided Alex with a lot of Rippling confidential information, including Rippling’s product roadmap, which indicated where Rippling was currently providing services and where it sought to expand. | also passed on the Deel “battlecard,”a document that instructed Rippling’s salesforce on what arguments to make to potential customers about the superiority of Rippling products over Deel’s. | also provided Alex with many of Rippling’s sales leads.
When you are paying top dollar for your agent, you want to make sure you are getting a constant stream of Rippling tech sales alpha.
Sometimes Alex would ask me for Rippling’s customers in a particular country for specific products. This is not information that was generally available to Rippling personnel, so | would provide Alex with this information by accessinga restricted report within the Rippling application, such as the Global Payroll “New Hire Report,” which is a report that | had access to as a result of my role as a Global Payroll Compliance Manager. After | accessed this report, | would note the customer names in a spreadsheet and send Alex a screenshot.
Sometimes Alex would react enthusiastically about information | sent to him, saying things like, “this channel is beast” or “these are badass.” I understood this to mean that what | sent him was really good and | should keep sending him similar information. Sometimes Alex would say that certain information was a “headache,” which | took to mean that he did not find it valuable.
In December of 2024, | told Alex that | planned to leave Rippling. Alex said | should stay there and continue to spy for a few more months. He said that | should contact Dan Westgarth, and that if | did stayon at Rippling for a few more months, Dan would see to it that my consulting company Global Payroll Geeks, would get money from Deel. Alex promised to make Global Payroll Geeks a preferred partner of Deel after | told him | would stay at Rippling for a little while longer.
In January of 2025, Alex Bouaziz created a WhatsApp group with Dan Westgarth and myself as participants and named this group “Keith <> Dan.” | believe this group was formed to discuss this proposed Global Payroll Geeks partnership. A copy of the logs for this WhatsApp group is exhibited at Tab 8 of the Book of Exhibits.
When they try to leave, you have to appeal to their primary reason for turning their coat to begin with, in this case the greed and desperation of a mid-level HR guy. Unfortunately for them, things started to fall apart.
At the end of February 2025, Alex told me to search Rippling’s Slack system for the channel “#d-defectors.” | ran the search immediately and began to look at the results. Within minutes, Alex messaged me again and told me not to run the search because he believed it was a “trap.”
| told Alex that by the time | got his message, | had already done the search and he said “oh shit.” | told him that the “#d-defectors” channel had Matt Plank, Rippling’s Chief Revenue Officer, in the channel. | told him | was frightened, but he just said, “don’t worry.” Thereafter, he continued to press me to pass him information from Rippling.
On Friday, March 14, 2025, | went into the Rippling office believing | was there to pick up a compliance award for one of my coworkers. An independent solicitor served me with a court order requiring inspection of my devices. The solicitor asked me where my devices were. Although | had my phone in my pocket, | lied. | told the solicitor that both my phone and laptop were in a bag downstairs. He followed me downstairs, where we retrieved my bag, which had my work laptop in it.
Once we got back upstairs after retrieving my bag, it started to sink in just how serious this was. | panicked. | went to the bathroom with my phone and performed a factory reset on it, erasing all of its contents, including all apps and contacts. | flushed the toilet a couple of times. When | came out, | just wanted to get out of there. | started to walk out, but the solicitor tried to stop me. He warned me that this was serious, and there was a court order requiring my cooperation.
| said, “l’ll take that risk” and left.
| walked around for a while, and then logged onto LinkedIn on my phone browser and messaged Alex, “hey.” He then called me from a Romanian phone number and not his usual +33 number. | am not sure whether the call came through his phone or WhatsApp. | know that it came from a Romanian number,as the cail came up with the international prefix which was identified as “ROM". The call came within three to five minutes of me sending the message. | know that it was Alex, as | had pinged him via Linkedin and | recognised his voice. | told him what happened.
| told him | got served with a High Court order and that | was in serious trouble. | told him that Rippling was saying | had taken their data. He said everything was going to be okay and that someone would get in touch straight away. Afterwards, he messaged me on LinkedIn saying something like, “hey Keith, thanks for the chat, make sure you apply for that job.” | believe Alex sent this message as a cover, to make it look like our conversation had been about a job application rather than their scheme to steal Rippling’s information.
Here we enter the “disengage the troublesome agent to avoid suspicion” phase, except that it was a bit too late for that.
| then gota call from someone named “David” and pronounced “DAH”- “VEED.” within approximately the next hour. | don’t know who David is nor what his last name is, but | believe he is affiliated with Deel or its network. | listened to a portion of a webinar conducted by Andrea David Mieli, who | understand from his LinkedIn profile is the Global Senior Director of Legal at Deel. | immediately recognised Mr Mieli’s voice as the “David” that | spoke to on a few occasions via Telegram starting March 14, 2025.
| tried to talk to David, but he interjected and told me to call him back via Telegram. He said not to install Telegram again on my old phone, but to go get a “new Telegram number”. | understood this meant | should buya new phone (a burner phone) and install Telegram on the new phone.
David also gave me a number to cal! him back on from my new telegram account. | did what he told me to do. Once | had Telegram again, | got into contact with “David,” and he added Asif Malik,one of Deel’s senior in-house lawyers to a three-way chat. We had a few phone calls that day. Asif, Deel’s in-house lawyer, said he was speaking in a “personal capacity” and that Rippling “have nothing.” They suggested flying my family and me to Dubai that night, saying “we all need a holiday.” 1 understood they were suggesting that my family and | flee Ireland permanently and that Deel would put me up in Dubai. They kept saying that Rippling was being very aggressive and improper, and that they didn’t have anything on me. They said | should “tell them nothing” and that | should “stick with the programme,” meaning | should lie and keep quiet. Deel’s lawyer Asif said, “don’t worry, PSG is going to sort all this out.” | understood him to be referring to Alex when he said “PSG” because Alex and | frequently talked about football (soccer) and PSG was Alex’s team.
Of course the "senior legal leader" will be a 30-something Italian guy. Even worse, Asif was a legal counsel at Rippling before joining Deel in the summer of 2024.
From March 15, 2025 to March 25, 2025, | spoke to Deel’s lawyer, Asif, every day. | also received supportive calls from David, offeringre assurance and general comfort. During these calls, Deel’s lawyer Asif told me repeatedly, “The guys at the top have your back,” and “This is going all the way to the top of the mountain.” | understood him to mean that Alex and Philippe would take care of me if | refused to cooperate against Deel. Deel’s lawyer Asif said they would move me and my family to Dubai, and would figure out a mechanism to cover my legal costs. | understood that | would become a consultant for Deel and would have my legal costs paid “through that mechanism” and that the consulting business would be very successful once | was back up and running. | understood that | would be legally protected and be financially rewarded if | kept quiet and stuck with the plan.
Deel’s lawyer Asif said that Deel’s strategy to helpme required that | make statements that Rippling facilitated sanctioned “Russian payments”, and that “there’s going to be a shift in the narrative”. He specifically advised me on making such statements to the Central Bank of Ireland, the High Court, and Deel’s Irish solicitors A&L Goodbody that | was being harassed because | was reporting illegal “Russian payments”. | knew this was false. | have never made any such reports to anyone at Rippling,nor outside of Rippling, prior to Asif’s instruction and | have no knowledge of any sanctioned payments made by Rippling. | went along with the plan initially. It seemed like a way out of the situation.
On March 15, 2025, | spoke to Deel’s lawyer, Asif. He told me to destroy my old phone by breaking it up and throwing it in the canal. By then, because | had performed a factory reset and deleted all of my apps and contacts, | no longer had contact details for Alex, and Deel’s in-house lawyers Asif and David were my only point of contact at that time. | felt lost at sea and it was one of the darkest days of my life.
We don't need to continue further, I think that it's clear where this is going.
Paul Weiss, the legal company representing Deel, has canceled their contract, with another company taking over. During the all-hands meeting at Deel about this situation, the employees were asked to stay quiet and not discuss this further under any circumstances.
“We are planning a bigger attack,” Alex Bouaziz told employees. “Stay tuned. Stay locked in.”
The way of working of the Bouaziz family has been under scrutiny for a long time, with this situation not coming as a surprise to a lot of insiders.
For those who played along with their schemes, it's important to remember that you are disposable the moment you are no longer providing utility. If you think that you are "much smarter and well-connected" than O'Brien, you are gravely mistaken.
You need to remember that the Bouaziz family did not actually have to do this. The company was gearing up for an IPO and had seen sufficient success to satisfy most people's ambition. They did it because it was fun.
"We'll play a little game, like James Bond" is not a coincidence. The goal was not to compete with Rippling. The goal was to humiliate Parker Conrad and make him feel weak, defeated, like a failure. Everything around this and how they do business is rife with nepotism and disregard for anything that's not to the benefit of their own personal gain.
There is a reason why laws exist. It's not because your average person can't recognize right from wrong, it's to curb the behavior of the hyenas at the edges of society. They will always show their colors; you just need to be willing to pay attention.
For anybody still part of the Deel sales team, this is a critical moment. How you act now will determine the longevity of your career in tech sales. And maybe, just maybe, this would be a reflection of the self-respect you have for yourself.
