Moderna’s new headquarters at 325 Binney St. in Cambridge, developed by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, includes a geothermal system that extracts heating and cooling capacity from steady temperatures below ground. Image courtesy of Alexandria Real Estate Equities
A former Massachusetts employee stole company secrets and strategies on lab properties, major life science developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities claims in a lawsuit.
Alexandria fired William DePippo on Feb. 25 after discovering that he had transferred hundreds of company documents to his personal email account, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Boston.
“Alexandria discovered numerous emails from DePippo expressing animus toward Alexandria and its employees, including an admission by DePippo that he planned ‘to flip everyone off and go run a company – and do my own thing,’” the developer’s attorneys at Cooley LLP in Boston wrote in the March 26 lawsuit first reported by Law360.
In February, executives became suspicious because DePippo’s “conduct and attitude raised questions about whether he was attending to his duties” and discovered that he used a file-sharing program to send hundreds of documents to his personal email, the lawsuit states: “On January 13, 2025, DePippo informed a third party that he was `waiting to hear my fa[te] at work” following his reluctance to work in person with his Alexandria coworkers rather than continue working remotely, because `these douche bags [at Alexandria] aren’t people I would work with.’”
Sent from a folder named FUBAR2025, the files included “detailed plans for cost recovery on particular properties” and corporate strategy on budgets for specific projects, Alexandria claims. The lawsuit does not name specific properties.
Such documents would be valuable to a potential competitor, which “would not need to invest the time, effort, or resources required to create such planning documents and would have an immediate, substantial head start, as well as the ability to undercut ARE on price, due to the R&D and trial-and-error costs avoided,” the complaint states.
The lawsuit alleges misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.
A message left with DePippo’s attorney was not returned.
According to a separate complaint filed March 24 in Suffolk Superior Court, DePippo claims that Alexandria violated the Massachusetts Fair Wages Act and is seeking more than $2 million in compensation, reflecting lost wages and treble damages.
DePippo claims that Alexandria owes him more than $2 million because he did not receive his wages in a timely fashion: specifically, not until the seventh day after the close of the pay period, according to a court filing.
DePippo was originally hired by Alexandria in 2014 and promoted in 2021 to executive vice president for the company’s mid-Atlantic territory, according to court filings. DePippo was earning $445,000 in base salary at the time of his firing, and had accrued more than $4.6 million in vested stock grants.
Alexandria denies violations of the Fair Wages Act, according to a March 24 filing by its attorneys, Foley & Lardner LLP of Boston.
