EBay settles criminal charges
Over harassment of Natick couple
An agreement announced Thursday between California e-commerce giant eBay and the US attorney’s office in Boston settled new criminal charges over the bizarre stalking and harassment of a Natick couple while also shedding fresh light on the origins of the debacle.
As part of the agreement, eBay will pay a $3 million penalty, improve its legal compliance program, and monitor corporate compliance for three years. In return, Acting Massachusetts US Attorney Joshua Levy agreed to indefinitely defer prosecuting the company on six criminal charges related to the 2019 harassment of Ina and David Steiner, who publish a website covering eBay called EcommerceBytes.
“EBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct,” Levy said in a statement. “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.”
As previously revealed in filings in criminal cases starting in 2021, the
Steiners drew the ire of top eBay executives including then-chief executive Devin Wenig over coverage of the company on their website and comments on the site from readers. The complaints eventually led lower-level employees in the security department to send the couple threatening messages and deliveries, including a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask, and to visit Natick to stalk the couple in August 2019.
But Thursday’s settlement offered many new details on the origins of eBay executives’ ire, beginning as early as August 2018, eight to nine months earlier than the oldest text messages included in the original criminal charges. Those original texts included an infamous message from Wenig to Steve Wymer, the chief communications officer in May 2019, referring to Ina Steiner: “Take her down.”
The new messages show multiple instances over the year before the harassment when top eBay executives fumed over articles by Ina Steiner and strategized at ways to diminish her. None of the newly disclosed messages referred
directly to the harassment and stalking methods that eventually led to the criminal cases, however.
In an August 2018 email disclosed in Thursday’s agreement, eBay’s then-chief communications officer wrote to Wendy Jones, senior vice president for global operations. Jones oversaw the company’s head of security, Jim Baugh. Chief executive Wenig “asked us to determine a more holistic strategy to counteract some of [Ina Steiner’s] persistent flame throwing,” the communications executive wrote, according to the filing.
The filing did not identify the chief communications officer by name. But Dan Tarman held the role from 2015 to the end of 2018, according to his LinkedIn page, an eBay web page, and news reports. Reached on Thursday, Tarman declined to comment.
“We have to win hearts and minds to make it and Ina is more destructive with sellers than you guys give her credit for,” Jones replied.
Jones then forwarded the emails to Wenig with the message: “Talk to you a bit about how we get this place fighting and not whining ... it’s pervasive and destructive. I am ALL IN and we can do this- we just need more fight from more people - including our leaders!”
In a Sept. 21, 2018, email included in the settlement, Jones wrote: “We should clap back at Ina - this is a good thing and we should tell them that. ..i know comms doesn’t want us to engage with them, but I want to.”
And in a March 2019 email from Wymer, who took over for Tarman at the end of 2018, he wrote to a subordinate about Ina Steiner: “I want to blow her site up.”
A few weeks later, Wenig emailed Wymer with a “list of sites for sellers that didn’t include Ina today. W[e s]hould find a way to promote it. It’s a way to diminish her without saying it. I tweeted it out.” And Wymer responded: “How can we promote it just to
‘eff with her? Totally diminishing for her.”
New messages revealed in the agreement also include some from 2019, just before the harassment campaign heated up. “Jim Baugh came to me with some thoughts and I told him to stand down and leave it alone,” Jones wrote to Wymer in a May 31, 2019, message about Ina Steiner.
Wymer replied: “You are being too kind... tell him to be my advisor on this issue // Some times you just need to make an example out of someone. Justice// We are too nice. She needs to be crushed.”
Jones then wrote back: “I told [Baugh] I would raise to you and you would let him know if you want him to proceed.”
In messages that have been previously disclosed, Wymer continued to complain about Steiner to Baugh, including in an Aug. 7, 2019, message just as the harassment campaign was peaking: “I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes.”
In 2022, Baugh pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges and was sentenced to almost five years in prison for his role leading the harassment and stalking campaign. Five other former employees who reported to Baugh and a contractor also pled guilty to criminal charges.
None of the former top executives have been charged in the case, but Wenig, Wymer, and Jones are defendants in a civil lawsuit filed by the Steiners seeking compensation for their suffering, harm to their business, and other grounds. The case is scheduled to go to trial in March 2025.
Wenig has denied any knowledge of the harassment campaign and said he would have stopped it if he had known.
The Steiners are likely to win “far more” than the $3 million penalty from the company in their lawsuit, University of Michigan business law professor Will Thomas said.
“From the victim’s perspective, this prosecution agreement settles any possible dispute about what happened,” Thomas said. “Likely, then, the only issue left to decide is just how much eBay will be made to pay in damages for its admitted crimes.”
Current eBay chief executive Jamie Iannone looked to move on after Thursday’s settlement. “The company’s conduct in 2019 was wrong and reprehensible,” Iannone said in a statement. “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.”