Prosecutors said in court documents that although Harville wasn't at the initial meetings about the scheme, “he was aware enough of the harassment by the time he was in Boston to joke with Baugh about delivering a bag of human feces, a running chain saw, and a rat” to their porch.īaugh's lawyers said their client had faced “intense, relentless pressure' from executives - including Wenig - to do something about the Steiners. Harville's attorneys said he had no involvement in or knowledge about the threatening messages or deliveries sent by his colleagues.

Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee went to the couple's home in the hopes of installing a GPS tracker on their car but the garage was locked, so Harville bought tools with a plan to break into it, prosecutors say. Ina Steiner began receiving dozens of strange emails from groups like an irritable bowel syndrome patient support group and the Communist Party of the United States, authorities say.Īuthorities portrayed Baugh as the mastermind of the scheme and said he directed eBay employees to use prepaid debit cards, disguises and overseas email accounts to hide the company's involvement.īaugh then recruited Harville to go with him to Boston to spy on the couple, authorities say. Bizarre anonymous packages started arriving at the couple's home, including a box of live spiders, a funeral wreath and a book about surviving the loss of a spouse. Soon, Ina Steiner began receiving harassing and sometimes threatening Twitter messages. That executive sent Wenig's message to Baugh and called Ina Steiner a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.” now is the time,” according to court documents. A half-hour after the article was published, then-CEO Devin Wenig sent another top eBay executive a message saying: 'If you are ever going to take her down. The scheme was hatched in August 2019 after Ina Steiner wrote a story about a lawsuit brought by eBay accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers.

Another former eBay executive, David Harville, was sentenced later Thursday to two years behind bars for his role in the scheme targeting David and Ina Steiner, the publisher and reporter who angered executives with coverage of the company in their newsletter, eCommerceBytes.īaugh and Harville, eBay’s onetime director of global resiliency, are among seven former employees who have pleaded guilty to charges in the case.Ĭourt records in the case show how the top eBay executives became enraged by the Steiners' newsletter and readers who posted comments criticizing the company on their site, which eBay viewed as a threat to its business.

Ebay executives