Suit against eBay harassment campaign heats up
Earlier this month, ecommerce giant eBay agreed to pay a $3 million fine and admitted responsibility for a bizarre harassment campaign against a Natick couple who run a blog that irked senior company leadership — but for Ina and David Steiner, there’s more they’re owed.
EBay and executives who have been found criminally liable don’t face just the criminal proceedings in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, but a civil case lodged by the Steiners seeking financial compensation for the harassment and fear they endured over coverage in their blog eCommerceBytes.com. And the case’s court docket is suddenly heating up.
In their 123-page amended complaint filed March 1, 2023, the Steiners target eBay Inc., security consultant company Progressive F.O.R.C.E. Concepts, then-CEO Devin Wenig, then-Senior VP and Chief Communications Officer Steven Wymer and thenSenior VP of Global Operations Wendy Jones of engaging “in a coordinated effort to intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence the Steiners, in order to stifle their reporting on eBay.”
The Steiners ask for a jury trial and are seeking monetary damages and attorneys fees and looks to the future, asking that “all revenues and profits received by any and all such individuals … be disgorged in their entirety to the Plaintiffs, in connection with any book, movie, story or any other media or means to attempt to profit off of the events set forth within this Complaint.”
The campaign, proven in criminal convictions against seven members of the security team at eBay, the Steiners wrote in their complaint, “shock the conscience, and demonstrate the utter depths eBay and PFC would stoop to in order to take the Steiners down and end their reporting on eBay.”
It didn’t work, however, as the website, whose readers include many sellers on the platform, continued to report on eBay — with three articles going up on the company in the past week. At the same time, all of the defendants were submitting their responses, paragraph for paragraph, on the amended complaint in the suddenly busy court docket.
The Steiners did not respond to a Herald request for comment on their case.
The lawsuit summarizes what it alleges senior eBay leadership set up in motion this way: “Defendants Wenig, Wymer and Jones provided the other Defendants with carte blanche authority — with the support of Defendants PFC and Krystek — to terminate the reporting of the Steiners by whatever means necessary, with Defendant Wymer expressing ‘…I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.’ Defendant Wymer promised the Defendants he would, ‘embrace managing any bad fallout’ if the plan went south, further directing, ‘We need to STOP her.’”
The campaign, according to the complaint, began with “an online intimidation campaign” through Twitter and then expanded into the shipment to the
Steiner doorstep of “live spiders, cockroaches, a bloody pig mask, a funeral wreath, and a book entitled ‘Grief Diaries: Surviving Loss of a Spouse’ sent directly to David Steiner,” with the shipments including ominous messages like, “do I have your attention now, (expletive slur for women)?” The campaign got neighbors involved, the complaint states, by sending copies of “barely legal” pornography to them under David Steiner’s
name.
And then came following the couple around in rented vehicles in their neighborhood, according to the complaint.
“Fearing for their lives, the Steiners installed surveillance cameras to monitor anyone approaching their home. The Steiners manned the surveillance footage at all hours of the day and night, and stayed in separate bedrooms so that if any of the Defendants broke into their home or attacked one of the Steiners, the other could escape and call for help,” the complaint states. “The Steiners were prisoners in their own home.”
EBay released a statement following the agreement earlier this month to pay the $3 million fine that “The company’s conduct in 2019 was wrong and reprehensible.”
“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,” he continued. “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 seven convicted eBay employees and contractors are Jim Baugh, eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security; David Harville, former Director of Global Resiliency; Stephanie Popp, former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence; Philip Cooke, a former Senior Manager of Security Operations; Stephanie Stockwell, a former Manager of Global Intelligence; and Veronica Zea, a contract intelligence analyst. Brian Gilbert, a former Senior Manager of Security Operations, has pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.