Tsk, tsk, dirty, dirty.
eBay has been fined $3 million due to a cyberstalking case initiated by six ex-employees against a couple running a news site.
The considerable settlement holds eBay responsible for the acts of these former employees against David and Ina Steiner, the husband-and-wife team that run the site Ecommerce Bites.
EBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. 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.
Joshua Levy, Acting US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts
The campaign came to a head in 2020, when federal investigators charged a group of former eBay employees. A number of managers and contractors were part of the group, but the most notable members were former director of safety James Baugh and former director of global resiliency David Harville.
The case starts in 2019, when the harassment campaign began after Ecommerce Bites published a number of pieces critical of eBay’s practices. In addition to using anonymous accounts to send threats to the couple, they also sent a number of repugnant packages to their home address. The packages included the likes of a box of live cockroaches, fly larvae, a “book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath”.
The intended goal of the campaign was to intimidate the couple so that eBay could approach them with an offer to end the harassment, generating goodwill and positive news coverage. Late in the campaign, some of these former employees were even surveilling the Steiner’s house in Natick, Massachusetts, with the intent of placing a GPS tracker on their car for presumably nefarious purposes.
This GPS plan naturally failed when David and Ina Steiner noticed the same rental car circling their neighborhood and reported it to the local police. Investigators discovered that the car had been rented to one of the eBay employees, which led to the police notifying the company. After an internal investigation, eBay fired all six employees involved in the campaign.
That action did not, however, spare them the legal consequences of what those employees did while at the company. Their settlement with the Justice Department required the payment of a maximum fine for six felony offenses, including four counts of felony stalking. Of the ex employees, though, almost all of them have either earned prison time, or home confinement. Only one is still awaiting sentencing.
The agreement requires eBay to “retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for a period of three years” to ensure the company instates safeguards against such criminal actions happening under their nose again. “While this settlement cannot erase the significant distress this couple suffered, we hope it will deter others from engaging in similar conduct,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Jodi Cohen.
In response, eBay has said the following of the settlement:
From the moment eBay first learned of the 2019 events, eBay cooperated fully and extensively with law enforcement authorities. We continue to extend our deepest apologies to the Steiners for what they endured. Since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company and eBay has strengthened its policies, procedures, controls and training. eBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners.
The Steiners, on the other hand, aren’t entirely happy with the case, particularly with the idea that the federal investigators allegedly didn’t interview top executives at eBay during the case.
Since the government first arrested some of the perpetrators and filed charges in June 2020, we have heard from sellers who are fearful of communicating legitimate concerns to us (or to eBay and other marketplaces) because they fear retaliation. Not only is that devastating to hear, but when sellers are afraid to speak up, it undermines our reporting.
Ina Steiner, via Ecommerce Bites
The Steiners have filed civil suits against both eBay and the former employees; the trial date for these suits is set for March 2025.
Source: PC Mag
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