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Deel allegedly paid €5,000 in crypto to spy on competitor
An Irish man who confessed to spying for payroll firm Deel while working for rival company Rippling claims to have been paid in crypto as part of an alleged James Bond-inspired plot.
Rippling filed a lawsuit against Deel in March 2025, accusing the firm of misappropriation of trade secrets, racketeering, and tortious interference. Now, an affidavit filed in Ireland’s high court has revealed the confession of Keith O’Brien, the alleged spy involved.
O’Brien claims he spied for Deel after its CEO, Alex Bouaziz, offered him roughly €5,000 ($5,500) to obtain information on Ripplings’s “way of doing things” in a meeting where James Bond was mentioned.
He accepted and claims he received his first payment before Alex’s father, Deel’s CFO Philippe Bouaziz, told him that “future payments would be made via cryptocurrency, as this method would leave ‘no trace.’”
O’Brien says he was paid in Ethereum to his blockchain.com wallet and subsequently converted the funds to fiat due to crypto’s fluctuating price.
One of O’Brien’s statements within the affidavit detailing alleged requests from Alex Bouaziz.
Various documents were allegedly accessed from Rippling, including project roadmaps and the firm’s tactics for positioning its product as a superior alternative to Deel.
However, after months of spying, a solicitor served O’Brien a court order, leading him to suspect that Rippling had set up a trap to catch him out. Deel worked to keep O’Brien out of legal trouble while asking him to maintain that Rippling had facilitated sanctioned Russian payments.
O’Brien was worried about Alex Bouaziz’s wealth and power and said, “I realised that I was harming myself and my family to protect Deel,” and subsequently came clean about the alleged spy deal.
He also says he worked for Rippling before applying unsuccessfully for a job at Deel. After staying in touch with Deel’s CEO, he claims he let Alex know he was planning to leave Rippling before Alex offered him the spy opportunity.
Protos has reached out to Rippling and Deel for comment on the case and will update this article if we hear anything back.
