eBay Cyberharrased Blogger by Mailing Roaches, Spiders And p*rnography

Goes all the way to the top. I can tell you from experience that their old CEO was an idiot and an *******.


Feds: Former eBay Employees Sent Newsletter Writers Roaches, Spiders And p*rnography


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Federal prosecutors on Monday unveiled criminal charges against six former eBay employees for allegedly carrying out a harassment campaign against a Massachusetts couple who run a ecommerce newsletter.

Wilfredo Lee/AP
Angered by items that appeared in a e-commerce newsletter, six former employees of eBay sent the publishers, a couple living in Massachusetts, live cockroaches and spiders, p*rnography, a bloody pigface mask, a preserved pig fetus and a funeral wreath, and attempted to secretly install a tracking device on the couple's car, federal authorities allege in criminal charges unsealed on Monday.

Authorities do not disclose the name of the newsletter, nor the couple who were the subject of the alleged harassment campaign. But several of the blog posts mentioned by prosecutors can be found on EcommerceBytes, a site and newsletter ran by David and Ina Steiner that often focuses on eBay sellers, highlighting their struggles with the online retailer. The couple have also drawn attention to how much top executives at eBay are paid.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said at a press conference on Monday that the ex-eBay employees exacted revenge in a manner intended to torment and intimidate the couple.

"They were not merely unhappy, they were enraged," said Lelling said, who called the scheme a "campaign fueled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company to emotionally and psychologically terrorize this middle aged couple," noting that involvement "goes pretty far up the chain at eBay."

posted an item about a lawsuit eBay filed accusing Amazon of attempting to poach eBay sellers to Amazon's online marketplace.

Shortly after, a person identified as Executive 1 texted someone known in the federal affidavit as Executive 2 that Ina Steiner was "out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down..now is the time."

Executive 2 allegedly wrote back: "On it."

In a text message from April 10, 2019, Executive 2 allegedly texted Executive 1 with this message including a link to the couple's newsletter with an item about the compensation of Executive 1: "We are going to crush this lady."

In another message sent over email, Executive 2 allegedly said the newsletter writers have "dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us as a way to build their own brand," adding that "we look bad fighting back in public."

"I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it should be explored," Executive 2 wrote, according to federal investigators. "Whatever. It. Takes."

Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig's involvement

Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig left the company in September 2019, citing a conflict with eBay's new board of directors.

In a statement on Monday, eBay said its own internal investigation never directly linked Wenig to the harassment.

"While Mr. Wenig's communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband," the company wrote.

However, a source close to the investigation confirms to NPR that Wenig is among the executives who exchanged text messages and emails encouraging retaliation against the couple.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the district of Massachusetts declined to comment on individuals not named in the charging documents, but noted that the investigation remains ongoing.

Four other former employees charged

Prosecutors say Baugh and Harville lied about involvement with the harassment to investigators and deleted text messages to cover up their communication. But authorities say the messages were uncovered through subpoenas of Apple and forensic analysis of phones obtained by investigators.

Besides Baugh and Harville, the other four charged are Stephanie Popp, 32, of San Jose, eBay's former senior manager of global intelligence; Stephanie Stockwell, 26, of Redwood City, Calif., the former manager of eBay's global intelligence center; Veronica Zea, 26, of San Jose, a former eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst; and Brian Gilbert, 51, of San Jose, a former senior manager of special operations for eBay's global security team.

Lawyers for the defendants have not responded to NPR requests for comment.

 

Most executives I know aren't -smart-. They just treat people like numbers, know the buzzwords, how to kiss ass and have an MBA. A lot of eBay's bully-boys (and girls) are Millennials. It's easy to be a dick when you aren't looking someone in the eye.

 

The best way I can describe their organizational structure is that it’s just like the DMV. They’re ripe for competition but their best competitor, Etsy, won’t sell any non-handmade product unless it’s vintage or craft supplies. Sites like Bonanza are a joke.

Ive talked to people about coming up with a viable alternative, even seen a good framework from an old guy who came up at Oracle with Larry Ellison, but it’s a massive undertaking that would require 100+ hours a week and lots of investment money to grow and pay lawyers.

 

Former eBay Execs Allegedly Made Life Hell for Critics

Surveillance. Harassment. A live cockroach delivery. US attorneys have charged six former eBay workers in association with an outrageous cyberstalking campaign.



LATE LAST SUMMER, an executive at eBay sent a series of text messages to James Baugh, who was the company’s senior director of safety and security at the time. “If we are ever going to take her down..now is the time,” the first message read, according to a screengrab of the thread. Later, the executive emphasized, “I want her DONE.” Baugh responded that he had a plan. And then he allegedly set it in motion.

A sweeping criminal complaint released Monday by the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office details the unlikely, appalling consequences of that exchange. It charges six former eBay employees and contractors, including Baugh, with a cyberstalking campaign against the publishers of an ecommerce news site that covered the company. The objective: Get the publishers—a married couple living in Natick, Massachusetts—to stop writing negative stories about eBay, and figure out the identity of one particularly vociferous commenter. Their alleged methods were outrageous, as were their attempts to cover it up.

The harassment campaign was planned in a series of meetings, prosecutors say. In one, Baugh showed the assembled team a clip, according to a confidential witness cited in the complaint, of the movie Johnny Be Good, in which pranksters deliver increasingly absurd and unwelcome items to people’s homes. A brainstorm allegedly followed: What could they send to their victims that would terrify them? In a separate meeting, the complaint says, Baugh and a few others charted out a complementary social media strategy: They would send anonymous tweets and DMs to the couple, pretending to be angry eBay sellers and claiming responsibility for the deliveries. They would also eventually doxx the couple by publicly posting their home address.


“The result, as alleged in the complaint, was a systematic campaign, fueled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company, to emotionally and psychologically terrorize this middle-aged couple in Natick with the goal of deterring them from writing bad things online about eBay,” US attorney Andrew Lelling said in a press conference Monday morning. While the complaint does not identify the victims by name, it cites specific headlines and stories that indicate that Baugh and his team were after the husband and wife publishers of EcommerceBytes.

Three of them ran up a $750 bill at a Boston restaurant, batting around more potential deliveries like chain saws, human feces, and a dead rat.

The harassment, prosecutors say, was not the only endgame. In a grotesque bit of 3-D chess, the eBay team allegedly responsible for the campaign planned to eventually step in and offer to help make it stop. This "white knight" strategy, as the criminal complaint calls it, was intended to create goodwill toward eBay, so that coverage would improve, and the victims would identify whoever was behind that troublesome commenter account.


The campaign unspooled over a few weeks in August. On August 7, a Twitter account that went by Tui_Elei, allegedly created by another defendant, sent a DM to the female victim asking what her problem was with eBay. When she did not respond, it continued to message her with increasingly crude language. The following evening, according to court documents, she found that someone had signed up her email account for dozens of email lists and newsletters; the subject headers included “the Satanic Temple” and “Cat Faeries.”

And then, on August 10, the deliveries started. First, an email confirming the order of a “Preserved Fetal Pig” that was on its way to the victims’ house. (The order was canceled, Lelling said Monday, after an inquiry from the vendor.) Later that same afternoon, Amazon delivered a Halloween mask of a bloody pig’s face. Fourteen minutes later, court documents say, the Tui_Elei Twitter account sent another DM: “DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????”




The complaint lays out a hellish timeline: On August 12, another Amazon delivery, a copy of the book Grief Diaries: Surviving the Loss of a Spouse. The next day, a voicemail for the second victim following up on a fabricated inquiry to open an Adam & Eve sex toy franchise. The next, a package of fly larvae and live spiders. Another containing live cockroaches. On August 15, two of the couple’s neighbors received copies of Hustler: Barely Legal in the husband's name. That same day, a local florist delivered a funeral wreath to the couples' home. The Tui_Elei account sent harassing messages throughout.

 

Continued...


That’s also when, prosecutors say, the eBay team escalated to in-person surveillance; several of them allegedly flew out to Boston, checked in at the Ritz Carlton, and drove out that night to Natick intent on installing a GPS monitor on the couple’s Rav4. They had practiced, Lelling said Monday, on a similar model in the eBay parking lot before departure. The car was locked in the garage; the following day, eBay's director of global resiliency at the time, David Harville, allegedly bought a screwdriver, painter’s tool, pry bar, and rubber gloves. “I believe based on my training and experience that these were the tools that Harville intended to use to break into the Victims’ garage,” FBI special agent Mark Wilson wrote in the criminal complaint.

On August 16, members of the eBay team allegedly tailed the couple in a rented Dodge Caravan. The surveillance team was listening to the local police dispatch; when the couple reported they were being followed, the crew peeled off. That night, court documents say, three of the defendants ran up a $750 bill at a Boston restaurant, batting around more potential deliveries like chain saws, human feces, and a dead rat. In the middle of the night, they sent an emergency plumber to the home.

The surveillance continued, prosecutors say, as did the harassment. A little after midnight on August 18, a classified ad appeared on Craigslist promoting a week-long “BLOCK PARTY” for “singles/couples/swingers” and listed the victims' Natick address. Visitors were encouraged to arrive after 10 pm and to “knock on the door/ring the doorbell anytime of day or night.” That afternoon, the complaint says, the Tui_Elei account posted their names and address as well. A few minutes later, a direct message: "U get my gifts cunt!!??"

Two minutes later, another Craiglist posting advertising an “Everything must go!” estate sale at the same address. Just over an hour later, a third Craigslist ad: “Mature (50s) married couple seeking singles or other couples open to exploring threesomes, bdsm, cross dressing.”

The couple successfully got Twitter to suspend the Tui_Elei account for doxxing, but more popped up in its place—which prosecutors also have tied back to the eBay team.


“This was a determined, systematic effort by senior employees of a major company to destroy the lives of a couple in Natick, all because they published content the company executives didn’t like,” Lelling said at Monday’s press conference. “For a while they succeeded, psychologically devastating these victims for weeks as they desperately tried to figure out what was going on and stop it.”

On August 21, 11 days after the alleged harassment campaign began, two threads converged with relative speed, according to court documents. A member of the eBay group made contact with the couple as part of the next phase of the “white knight” strategy—and Natick police traced a rental car license plate number to an eBay contractor allegedly involved in the scheme.

As the Natick PD began making inquiries, the eBay employees and contractors scrambled over text messages to get their stories straight. When they realized that the gift cards they had purchased to fund their campaign could be traced back to Santa Clara, California, not far from eBay’s San Jose headquarters, they allegedly sought to “create a Samoan POI in Santa Clara,” according to a WhatsApp message quoted in the criminal complaint. (POI stands for “person of interest.”) “Then he becomes our primary suspect.”


It didn’t get that far. By August 22, the Natick police called in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The eBay team allegedly continued to dissemble, both to law enforcement and to eBay’s own lawyers, who by August 26 had begun to conduct their own interviews about the matter. “As the police and eBay’s lawyers continued to investigate, the defendants allegedly deleted digital evidence that showed their involvement, further obstructing what had by then become a federal investigation,” the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office said in a press release Monday.

On August 30, the company placed three of the employees on administrative leave. In a statement posted on its website Monday, eBay said that it had “terminated all involved employees” in September 2019.

Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig also left the company that month. While he isn’t named in the criminal complaint, eBay confirmed that he is “Executive 1,” who allegedly gave the initial order to “take her down” (which was then relayed to Baugh by “Executive 2”). The company also confirmed Wednesday that "Executive 2" is former chief communications officer Steve Wymer. Bloomberg News first reported Wymer's connection. Neither is charged with any crime.

“The internal investigation found that while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband,” eBay’s statement says. “However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure from the company.”

The six former eBay employees and contractors are all charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Each charge carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000, and restitution.

 

Awesome to hear some inside info. Once I heard about this story it clicked into place, with the board activists up his butt and other issues.

Do you have any contacts there still? Sent you a PM.


Edit- read the whole linked document. Holy crap that is crazy and worth a read if you’re in to true crime. There are a lot of parallels with what we’re seeing with social injustices coming to light with BLM. Great add, thanks again!

 

WSJ had a story yesterday. They were also on ebays hit list.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ebay-harassment-campaign-pig-cockroach-blog-11593009038

 

The Cohen brothers should direct this movie.

One of the things I found funny about eBay’s blundering attempts is that they got all of their ideas for harassment from 1980’s movies.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6945112/Ebay-Cyberstalking.pdf

Count me in next time, if you plan on locking me in a Target overnight with a young Jennifer Connelly.