Unethical competitors, a story of multiple spies, theft, and a legal dispute: Liquifi and Deel Conspiring to “kill Toku”

Toku has been involved in a legal dispute which has recently been made public. Court filings detail that the CEOs of Deel and Liquifi conspired to “crush Toku” in a scheme involving multiple spies and the theft of over 25,000 confidential documents. 

We found out that the same Deel spy from the Rippling case applied to Toku four times (thankfully we didn’t hire him), and Deel was kept informed of subsequent successful attempts by Liquifi to gain information and insight into Toku’s operations.

What makes this even more disturbing is that at one point we had even discussed a potential merger between Toku and Liquifi. While Liquifi’s CEO kept those conversations alive and continued to meet with our board members, behind the scenes he was forming the "Anti-Toku Army."

We filed our initial complaint against Liquifi, but the case has since become complex in that 1) it now involves Deel and 2) we were not granted a preliminary injunction, which means this will be a lengthy court process to trial. 

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Interestingly, two weeks ago, Liquifi began touting a ruling that didn’t forcibly enjoin their business—an extremely high bar—but doesn’t refute that they knew 25,000 documents - including proprietary files, source code, personal and employee info, and more - were taken from Toku. Discovery has already uncovered hundreds of these documents on their systems, and evidence shows that hundreds more were deleted after the lawsuit was filed in an apparent attempt to conceal their actions by Liquifi’s CEO, Robin Ji. 

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Why would any company celebrate this kind of behavior? 

“No Toku material was used to develop our product.” – Liquifi claims, yet in an internal “Winning the Crypto Market” memo that they presented to the CEO of Deel, LiquiFi touted having Toku’s former employees on staff to supply the know-how they lacked and what they needed to compete. Can any company believably claim they are competing fairly when they have more than 33% of their ex-Toku employees who have all brought over stolen Toku documents? 

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We agree with Liquifi that the truth and the full picture will come out, and we’re only just beginning to learn the full extent of their unethical behavior. 

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The case—and all of Toku’s claims—continue toward trial. Nothing in the ruling held Liquifi innocent or found the stolen documents “non-confidential” as a matter of law. 

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The Court expressly noted that the merits will be decided on a full factual record. Toku is confident in that process and will continue to press its claims. 

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We didn’t want this fight. But we won’t shy away from it.

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We’re pursuing accountability not just for our company, but for the integrity of the entire industry. We’ll continue to lead by example – building responsibly, serving transparently, and operating from a place of fairness, strength, and honesty.

Toku remains focused on building the industry's most robust, compliant global payroll and token-compensation infrastructure. We will protect our customers, our intellectual property, and the integrity of the ecosystem—because that is how the truth ultimately wins.

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