Global e-commerce company eBay Inc. has agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty to a Massachusetts couple after former employees targeted them in a harassment and intimidation campaign, officials said Thursday.
The company admitted that between August 2019 and August 2020, Jim Baugh, eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, and six other members of the security team targeted the victims for their roles in publishing a newsletter for eBay sellers, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts said.
“eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct,” said Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy. “The company’s employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand.”
Ina and David Steiner of Natick, Massachusetts, founded e-commerce newsletter site EcommerceBytes – launched in 1999 as AuctionBytes – and their coverage could often be critical of eBay and its policies.
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eBay’s senior executives became frustrated with the newsletter’s “tone and content,” and with public comments posted below its articles, prosecutors said. Communications between those executives and Baugh kick-started the campaign against the couple.
The Steiners told ABC News’ “Good Morning America” in 2021 that the intimidation campaign had begun with graffiti spray-painted on their fence before escalating to online harassment.
The harassment included Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims’ home, and public and private social media posts with threats to visit their home and criticizing their newsletter.
The Steiners were also terrorized with disturbing packages they received in the mail at their home. Items included a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath and live insects, officials said.
“Today’s settlement holds e-Bay criminally and financially responsible for emotionally, psychologically, and physically terrorizing the publishers of an online newsletter out of fear that bad publicity would adversely impact their Fortune 500 company,” said Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Division.
When the seven co-conspirators learned of the police investigation into the harassment campaign, they deleted digital evidence and falsified records, prosecutors said.
eBay was charged with two criminal counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of justice.
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The e-commerce giant will also be required to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years and significantly improve its compliance program.
Baugh was sentenced to 57 months in prison in September 2022.
The other convicted co-conspirators include David Harville, former Director of Global Resiliency, who was sentenced to 24 months in prison in September 2022; Stephanie Popp, former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence, who was sentenced to 12 months in prison in October 2022; and Philip Cooke, a former Senior Manager of Security Operations, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison and 12 months of home confinement in July 2021.
Stephanie Stockwell, a former Manager of Global Intelligence, and Veronica Zea, a contract intelligence analyst, were each sentenced to one year in home confinement in October and November 2022.
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Brian Gilbert, a former Senior Manager of Security Operations, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.