Another gripping allegation of corporate espionage has emerged from the profoundly boring world of employee onboarding platforms and 401(k) administration.
All year, we’re been following the ongoing death match between HR software titans Rippling and Deel, which are currently locked in a litigation featuring accusations of planted moles and systematic data theft. Now, as first spotted by Axios, comes Act Two: the 401(k) management unicorns, Human Interest and Guideline, squaring off in federal court with allegations so brazen that they’re embarrassing.
Here’s a taste, plucked from Human Interest’s lawsuit against Guidewire, filed this month in Utah federal court: “We are going to tear apart HI. It’s going to be the easiest thing to do.”
That’s Brandon Sterri texting his brothers on January 29. According to the complaint, Brandon and his brother Brian were, at that moment, still drawing paychecks from Human Interest, still logging into their company-issued laptops every morning beneath reminders that access was “limited to authorized personnel,” and that they’d agreed “to protect confidential data.” Their third brother, Eirik, worked for the competition, Guideline.
Per the lawsuit, filed by a law firm in Salt Lake City, the Sterri brothers didn’t just talk big. They allegedly called their operation the “Sterri Takeover,” a name revealing either remarkable hubris or a serious misunderstanding of how corporate espionage is supposed to work, which is to say, very, very quietly.
The complaint alleges a months-long scheme in which Brian and Brandon, working as junior inside sales representatives at Human Interest, systematically funneled their employer’s most sensitive intelligence, including partnership leads, customer data, and internal strategy documents, directly to Guideline.
But not just to anyone at Guideline; Human Interest claims the brothers were personally sharing it with the company’s chief executive, Kevin Busque, and its chief financial officer, Steven Wu.
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