Ebay to pay $3 million penalty over harassment of couple behind newsletter

FILE PHOTO: David and Ina Steiner arrive at the federal courthouse for the sentencing hearings for former eBay Inc security executives Jim Baugh and David Harville, who pleaded guilty to participating in a campaign to harass the Steiners that involved sending disturbing home deliveries like cockroaches and a funeral wreath, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., September 29, 2022. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – EBay has agreed to pay $3 million to resolve a U.S. criminal probe into a campaign by several of its employees to stalk and harass a Massachusetts couple whose online newsletter was viewed as critical of the e-commerce company.

Federal prosecutors in Boston said on Thursday that eBay had entered into a deferred prosecution agreement after seven former eBay workers admitted to participating in an extensive campaign in 2019 that involved sending the couple cockroaches, fly larvae and a bloody Halloween pig mask.

The $3 million represents the maximum fine prosecutors could seek after charging eBay with stalking and other offenses, prosecutors said.

The case centered on David and Ina Steiner, a married couple in Natick, Massachusetts, who produce the newsletter EcommerceBytes and have sued eBay over what they say was a relentless campaign by its employees to terrorize them.

Prosecutors said senior executives deemed the newsletter critical of eBay, and in August 2019 then-Chief Executive Devin Wenig texted another executive that it was time to “take her down,” referring to Ina Steiner.

Wenig, a former Thomson Reuters executive who stepped down as eBay’s CEO in September 2019, was not charged, and his spokesman has said Wenig had “absolutely zero knowledge” of the actions eBay’s employees undertook.

Overseeing the harassment campaign was Jim Baugh, a former Central Intelligence Agency employee who at the time served as eBay’s senior director of safety and security. His lawyer has said he felt pressure to do something.

At Baugh’s direction, the Steiners received anonymous, harassing Twitter messages, bizarre emails, and disturbing home deliveries that included spiders, a funeral wreath and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, prosecutors said.

In August 2019, Baugh and others traveled from California to Natick to surveil the Steiners and try to install a GPS tracking device on their car. The Steiners spotted them and contacted police, prompting the federal investigation.

Baugh was sentenced in September 2022 to 57 months in prison. Others in the case have received punishments ranging from home confinement to two years in prison.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Bill Berkrot and Richard Chang)