Facebook owner Meta fired a terrified marketing boss after he complained about the company for re-hiring his deranged stalker, according to a lawsuit.
James Napoli said Meta didn’t take his numerous complaints seriously — even though the stalker showed up at his home, called his relatives and sent him hundreds of disturbing messages — because he is gay.
“The case of James Napoli illustrates that Meta is either incompetent or deliberately indifferent when it comes to protecting its employees from harassers and stalkers,” he said in the Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit.
“Meta’s failure to take this harassment and stalking seriously was due to sex- and sexual orientation-based stereotypes about gay men,” it charged.
The crazed man, identified only as “G.F.” in court papers, called himself a “lab rat” and a prophet; told Napoli he loved him; claimed he had “the power to turn [him] into a cat;” called him “a dangerous AI robot;” and wrote, “Meta is going to try to hurt you soon,” according to the lawsuit.
G.F. was initially laid off from Meta in November 2022. It’s unclear what he did for the company. The two didn’t work together, but met for coffee after G.F. was let go. Then the scary messages began, Napoli said.
But G.F. was rehired in January 2024, and when Napoli complained about it, Meta bosses allegedly sidelined Napoli meetings and assignments and gave him his first negative performance review since his 2019 hiring, he said in the lawsuit.
Napoli, 35, was fired in February, while on medical leave for Crohn’s Disease, he said in court papers.
“None of us should go to work and have to be stalked but then if we are, and the company knows about it— then rehires our stalker? There’s nothing that could be more dangerous. They may as well have lit his desk chair on fire,” said attorney Carrie Goldberg, who reps Napoli along with lawyer Peter Romer-Friedman.
Napoli said he reported the harassment to the NYPD.
G.F. was abruptly fired a month after his January re-hiring.
“Once again jobless, G.F. blamed Mr. Napoli for his second termination and devoted hundreds, if not thousands, of hours to stalking and harassing Mr. Napoli, menacingly telling Mr. Napoli to be ‘careful’ and claiming that he’d use ‘magnetic tech’ to determine if he was the ‘whistleblower’ responsible for his firing,” according to the lawsuit.
After G.F. was fired a second time, Napoli sued the company for putting him in harm’s way.
Napoli is seeking unspecified damages as well as his reinstatement.
Meta declined comment.
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