May 2025: More Corporate Espionage – Toku v Liquifi, and, of course, Deel. LinkedIn Debuts Creator Monetization

Happy Friday, Job Board Doctor friends! It’s that time of the week, and we just had a NEW HR and TA Technology espionage story drop. This time, it involves Toku and Liquifi, with our pals at Deel showing up on the fringes. In non-spy news, LinkedIn is edging closer to sharing cold hard cash with content creators, and a powerful story about the impact of Chinese tariffs on U.S. small businesses.

So you know the… deal. Let’s do this.

CONF/WorkCo, Inc. d/b/a Toku v Liquifi, Inc., et al.

According to their website, “Toku provides compliance infrastructure for cryptocurrency businesses, helping them operate legally and pay employees in stablecoins and tokens while adhering to tax laws in close to 100 tax jurisdictions globally.”

So basically, a global crypto payroll and payroll compliance company. Liquifi, in short, is a competitor to Toku and appears to have been in need of some additional expertise to enhance their solution with more tax compliance capabilities. (This is a complicated one, folks).

🔗 About Toku. 🔗 About Liquifi

And this, my friends, is the beginning of the newest HR Technology spy drama.

Our alleged spy, in this case, is former Toku General Counsel turned Liquifi General Counsel, Ben Snipes. Toku is accusing Snipes of downloading—or as Snipes calls it, “syncing”—more than 25,000 internal and confidential Toku documents into his personal cloud storage around June/July 2024.

Of those, more than 500 are alleged to appear on Liquifi’s internal servers. And that isn’t all.

Request for Preliminary Injunction

On April 14, 2025, Toku filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, and this week that relief was denied by the Delaware court where the case is filed.

According to Bloomberg Law, “A preliminary injunction is temporary relief that preserves the status quo until the courts decide on the merits of the case. The injunctive relief sought often involves asking a court to prevent an opposing party from taking specific action or continuing a current course of action.”

Was it a huge victory or a PR opportunity?

Both Liquifi and Deel put out statements touting a huge victory in the case this week after the injunction was denied. So huge victory or great PR move?

Likely the latter, as preliminary injunctions are only granted about 41% of the time and are not a reflection of the merits of the case or the likelihood of either party’s victory.

Intellectual Property Firm, Wolf and Greenfield, in 2022 wrote:

“We analyzed the grant rate for motions for preliminary injunctions filed between January 2, 2013, and December 31, 2020, in U.S. district courts as reported by Lex Machina. Of the 490 motions for preliminary injunctions filed, 41% (203 motions) were granted.”

🔗 Wolf and Greenfield Article

Where does Deel enter into the story?

I’m glad you asked. Deel is a named, non-party in the lawsuit. I would say they appear material yet adjacent to the case, including being named in discovery exhibits. In addition, they have retained counsel to make an appearance on their behalf as an a named entity just last week.

Per the San Franscico Standard’s reporting, “The suit claims that Deel hatched the spying plot because it did not have a crypto-native tax service to compete with that of Toku. Deel and Liquifi teamed up in early 2024 to build a competitor, but their efforts failed until Snipes joined Liquifi later that year, according to the filing.”

Between us, as creepy as I think a lot of the behavior by Deel’s leadership team is on multiple fronts, I’m going to hold my opinion on their culpability here until this case moves further through adjudication.

Since we’re all well aware I am not one to hold back, I am pondering the possibility that two really smart founders recognized they needed some heavy-hitting and very tarnished names, like Deel, Alex Bouaziz, and Keith O’Brien (yes, he is mentioned in the lawsuit) to help build up some press interest in the case, which was filed in late 2024.

Wherever Deel comes out in the wash here, this is a story the Job Board Doctor team will continue to follow. Maybe it is my youthful naivety, but the childish, erratic, and potentially illegal behavior of the leadership teams providing “best in class” services involving the most sensitive of our employees’ data deserves our consideration.

If you want to read the redacted Toku exhibit document for the preliminary injunction motion which includes some examples of the aforementioned childishness, here it is.

🔗 SF Standard – Another Startup Accuses Deel

🔗 BlockWorks – Gives a Different Take

LinkedIn Edges Closer to Creator Monetization

Social Media Today, which often shares their rather sassy thoughts on LinkedIn and their “record-setting engagement levels,” shared some exciting news for video content creators who have been leveraging the site’s relatively recent enhancement of in-app and on-site video content play.

From LinkedIn:

“BrandLink delivers more relevant video content to members while also allowing advertisers to align with editorial content from trusted publishers and, now, some of the world’s top creator voices, including Steven Bartlett, Bernard Marr, Allie K. Miller, Rebecca Minkoff, Candace Nelson, Guy Raz, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Shelley Zalis.”

While this isn’t for our “everyday” influencers quite yet, it certainly does take us one additional step down that path.

🔗 LinkedIn Content Creator Monetization

🚨Reality Check

What is your take on LinkedIn’s use of video?

Love it? Hate it? Want to get rich and retire on it? Let me know!

Podcast Alert: Impact of Chinese Tariffs on U.S. small businesses

Sharing with you a great listen from this week’s Chad and Cheese show that has caught the attention of many in the media. What does the impact of, in this case, Chinese tariffs actually LOOK like for an American small business owner and U.S. veteran?

From Chad and Cheese:

“What do you get when you mix a Shark Tank alum, a silicone baby mat, and a $230K tariff bill? A broken supply chain, that’s what.

In this dollars-and-sense edition of The Chad & Cheese Podcast, Beth Benike—CEO of Busy Baby—joins the boys to explain how a product designed to keep sippy cups off the floor is now caught in a global trade war. From American factories ghosting her, to Chinese partners defending her IP with literal raids, Beth’s entrepreneurial journey is part ‘How I Built This’ and part ‘Game of Thrones.’

We talk:

Tariffs that double product costs overnight
Baby shower gifts priced like luxury handbags
Walmart contracts vs. reality
The myth of “Made in America” for small businesses
And why your kid’s Christmas might look more 1970 than 2025

No politics. Just cold, hard manufacturing math—and one mother’s mission to keep America from running out of bibs. Tune in before the shelves go empty.”

You can listen here or wherever else you tune in to hear my gorgeous husband and that other guy. 🙂