The person accused of stalking Napoli, identified only by the initials “G.F.” in the complaint, was a member of Meta’s marketing team before he was laid off in November 2022 when the company cut 13% of its staff as part of a larger restructuring. 

Before the layoffs, G.F. and Napoli occasionally saw each other in meetings but were no more than “work acquaintances,” Napoli said. After G.F. lost his job, he reached out to Napoli for support and asked him to get a coffee. During that meeting, the accused stalker started making “disturbing” comments, the filing states. 

“[He] told me that he hears voices, God talks to him, and God had been talking to him about me since April of that year, and he sent me a list of documents that were his like journal entries over the months,” Napoli recalled.

Napoli “immediately” reported the incident to his manager and to HR, and says at first he was concerned for G.F.’s well-being. But over the next year, Napoli says, the situation escalated. 

G.F. began sending Napoli up to 30 messages a day, contacting his family members and referencing Napoli’s partner, friends and even his dog, Luigi, in messages. 

“I am being mind tortured with an A.I tech which I don’t know where it’s coming from and I am feeling like my love for you is being used for experiences I didn’t agree for, while I am being told by spirits that you and I are the two messengers,” G.F. wrote in one message to Napoli, according to the complaint. 

G.F. found out where Napoli lived and “personally delivered a large ream of disturbing writings and drawings” to the apartment, forcing Napoli and his partner to move, the lawsuit says. 

“It really felt like I was drowning for a long time because there was just nothing that I could do to escape. … It was really terrifying,” said Napoli. “I was worried about going out, I was worried about my dog, I was worried about my partner, because they were all mentioned by this person.” 

Napoli reported G.F. to the police and considered getting a restraining order, but under New York state law orders of protection are only available to people who have an intimate or familial relationship to their stalker, the lawsuit states. 

In September 2023, Napoli informed Meta that the stalking had increased “in both frequency and severity,” and the HR department assured him that G.F. was on the company’s “Do Not Hire” list and its “No Entry” list, which identifies people who shouldn’t be permitted into company buildings.

But just four months later, the company hired G.F. back to a contractor position after he apparently slipped through the cracks in the hiring process, the lawsuit says. Napoli learned his accused stalker was back at Meta when G.F.’s name popped up on Workplace, the company’s internal messaging system. Napoli says he received a message from G.F. stating that he’d been rehired and would be seeing him at meetings and events. 

“To have all of that come back after I was guaranteed that I would be kept safe, it was really harrowing,” said Napoli. “I immediately went to [HR]… they let me know that they were equally stunned. They didn’t have an answer as to how it happened, and they let me know that they would investigate.” 

For the next month, Napoli says he “lived in terror of interacting with G.F. at work” until Meta notified him that G.F. had been terminated. However, after G.F. lost his job a second time, his “stalking and harassment of Mr. Napoli significantly amplified and became more creative, sexually violent, and obsessive,” the lawsuit states.

As Napoli grappled with the continued stalking, he also faced what the lawsuit says was retaliation at Meta for complaining to his managers and to HR about the decision to rehire G.F.

Napoli had been tapped to lead an artificial intelligence marketing push at Meta, but says that in response to his complaints, those projects were taken away and he found himself sidelined with reduced responsibilities. 

In his complaint, Napoli is asking for damages but didn’t specify an amount. He also asked the court to enter judgements that would prohibit G.F. from being rehired at Meta and prohibit the company from “engaging in any further discriminatory or retaliatory acts” against Napoli. 

“I want to be able to do my job, and I want to be able to do my job without feeling like the shoe is going to drop,” said Napoli. “I am very passionate about my work, and I take a lot of pride in my work, and that is really all I want to be able to do.” 

Napoli said he decided to tell his story because he wants Meta to make reforms that would prevent something like this from happening again. 

“It doesn’t seem to me as though there are the right processes in place to stop this from happening to … me or to someone else,” said Napoli. “Everybody deserves a safe workplace.”