Bizarre.
Excerpts below; original story here:
https://apnews.com/article/ebay-spid...1382c71d992343
Ina Steiner wrote a story about a lawsuit brought by eBay that accused Amazon of poaching its sellers in 2019.
A half-hour after the article was published, then-CEO Wenig sent another top executive a message saying: “If you are ever going to take her down ... now is the time,” according to court documents. The executive sent Wenig’s message to James Baugh, who was eBay’s senior director of safety and security, and called Ina Steiner a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.”
Baugh, whom prosecutors described as the mastermind of the scheme, at one point recruited Harville to go with him to Boston to spy on the Steiners, authorities said. Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee went to the couple’s home in the hopes of installing a GPS tracker on their car, prosecutors said. The trio found the garage locked, so Harville bought tools with a plan to break in, prosecutors said.
Ina Steiner received harassing and sometimes threatening Twitter messages as well as dozens of strange emails from groups like an irritable bowel syndrome patient support group and the Communist Party of the United States.
Along with a box of live spiders and the cockroaches, the couple (Ina and her husband) had a funeral wreath, a bloody pig mask and a book about surviving the loss of a spouse show up at their door. Their home address also was posted online with announcements inviting strangers to yard sales and parties.
Baugh got five years in prison; another former executive, David Harville, was sentenced to two years. eBay itself was charged with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice and got a $3 million fine.
Baugh’s lawyers have said their client faced relentless pressure from former CEO Devin Wenig and other executives to do something about the Steiners.