The founder of an artificial intelligence startup has filed a lawsuit alleging that a major investment firm conducted unauthorized surveillance and cyber intrusions to steal valuable intellectual property.
Michael Lafave, who founded Cette AI, filed the complaint Tuesday in New York County Supreme Court against Voya Financial. The 35-page lawsuit alleges that the investment firm used sophisticated remote-access capabilities to gain unauthorized entry to his personal devices and accounts, potentially stealing proprietary AI models valued between $50 million and $100 million.
Cette AI specializes in using machine learning to advance materials engineering innovation. The company focuses on artificial intelligence, quantum computing-related technologies, and environmental infrastructure development.
According to the lawsuit, the alleged surveillance began in 2025 after Lafave filed a long-term disability benefits claim with Voya following a car accident two years earlier that left him unable to perform cognitively demanding work. As part of the disability claim process, Lafave disclosed his location at a remote cottage in Ontario, Canada, along with his disability status, treatment needs, and valuation materials for his company.
Lafave alleges that Voya exploited this information to remotely access his devices without authorization, beginning on Christmas Day 2025. He claims his network and devices began exhibiting unusual behavior that day, with at least two unauthorized machine-to-machine devices accessing his network.
The following day, December 26, Lafave observed activity suggesting attempts to erase or destroy evidence of the intrusion. This included more than 3 billion dropped packets associated with a nonpublic-facing IP address, which he describes as highly unusual for a rural location and consistent with efforts to obscure evidence of unauthorized access.
The lawsuit details multiple instances of suspicious activity, including the spoofing of his home Wi-Fi extender and the breach of a remote root account on his MacBook Pro through thousands of rapid bursts at extreme speed. Lafave also alleges that Voya hijacked his GitHub account and transferred some of his code.
In one particularly concerning allegation, Lafave claims he was subjected to physical surveillance or location-based monitoring after an anti-stalking alert was triggered on one of his Apple devices.
Lafave’s legal counsel sent Voya a cease-and-desist letter and preservation notice on January 19, informing the company of these concerns. According to the lawsuit, Voya responded nearly two months later, attributing any activity to his disability claim but making no mention of the cyber intrusion allegations.
The complaint states that the scale and character of the alleged intrusions would have required specialized equipment and infrastructure not typically present in a rural residential network environment and not available to retail customers.
Lafave claims he has incurred thousands of dollars in costs investigating the alleged intrusions and has suffered emotional distress and ongoing concerns about his personal and digital security.
The 11-count complaint accuses Voya of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, misappropriating trade secrets, trespass to chattels, unfair competition, civil conspiracy, unjust enrichment, and abetting tortious conduct.
The lawsuit suggests that Voya, which operates AI entities of its own, would materially benefit from the allegedly stolen intellectual property. Lafave characterizes the incidents as a premeditated series of cyber intrusions that required prior knowledge of his device environment, including the type of personal device he used, his operating system, location, and related metadata.
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