Deel’s “Watchman” Refuses to Cooperate and Will Hide Overseas Too

Deel now admits that it did pay its spy who stole Rippling’s trade secrets. The admission is not nearly as interesting as the absurd excuse. Deel wants us to believe that the spy was not being paid $6,000 monthly crypto payments for an illegal espionage ring run by Deel’s top executives – no, really, he was just being paid to find expensive watches. It’s purely a coincidence, Deel says, that the monthly crypto payments stopped in March 2025 when we filed our lawsuit against Deel. 

Let’s start with the uncontested facts:

• We uncovered that the wife of Deel’s COO paid spy Keith O’Brien $6,000 via Revolut (laundered money that was actually recorded as a corporate expense)

  • Deel admits it made this payment to the spy. But it claims this money was to help the spy –  a Rippling employee at the time – with “living expenses” (because companies, you know, often pay “living expenses” for their competitors’ employees!)

• Keith O’Brien’s sworn affidavit admitting he was an illegal spy describes the daily instructions he received from Deel’s CEO, Alex Bouaziz. Don't expect to see them anytime soon – they were disappearing Telegram messages listing specific information for O’Brien to steal for Bouaziz.

  • Deel even admits that its CEO communicated with the spy via disappearing Telegram messages. And Bouaziz also admits that he specifically demanded that O’Brien send him information about Rippling’s French global payroll product offerings. 

So how do Deel and the Bouaziz Racketeering Enterprise think they can get away with all of this after the spy admitted in his sworn confession that Deel CFO Philippe Bouaziz coordinated monthly crypto payments for his spying? That O’Brien, a payroll specialist with zero background in watches, was being paid for his discerning taste in sourcing luxury watches by an elusive figure code-named “A.D.” or “the Watchman,” a luxury watch dealer on the hunt for bargains.

Deel claims its spy asked Philippe Bouaiziz for more “living expense” money, so Philippe introduced him to the Watchman – “a friend who sold interests in secondhand luxury watches.” Deel claims that O’Brien’s monthly $6,000 finder’s fee in exchange for luxury watch sourcing “had nothing to do with Deel, Rippling, trade secrets, or any kind of ‘spying’ activity.” And O’Brien got paid every month (until Rippling filed suit).

Now that Deel has come forward with such a simple explanation, surely they will be eager to stand behind this story in court. There’s just one problem: The Watchman is refusing to participate in discovery and refusing to substantiate any of Deel’s claims.  

We'd ask what the Bouaziz Racketeering Enterprise is hiding, but the answer seems pretty clear.

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