In this Oct. 17, 2012, file photo, an eBay sign sits in front of the company's headquarters in San Jose, Calif. On Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020, federal prosecutors said four former eBay Inc. employees had agreed to plead guilty to their roles in a campaign of intimidation that included sending live spiders and cockroaches to the home of a Massachusetts couple who ran an online newsletter highly critical of the auction site. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
Four former eBay Inc. employees have agreed to plead guilty to their roles in a campaign of intimidation that included sending live spiders and cockroaches to the home of a Massachusetts couple who ran an online newsletter critical of the auction site, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
“Four former employees of #eBay are scheduled to plead guilty on Oct. 8 at 2pm via zoom in federal court in #Boston,” according to a tweet from the official account of the U.S. attorney's office in Massachusetts. “The defendants are charged w/ participating in a cyberstalking campaign that targeted a Massachusetts couple.”
The four expected to plead guilty are Brian Gilbert, 51; Stephanie Popp, 32; Stephanie Stockwell, 26; and Veronica Zea, 26, according to The Boston Globe.
All live in San Jose, California, except for Stockwell, who lives in Redwood City, California.
They are among seven former eBay employees charged in the case, in which the Massachusetts couple had other disturbing items sent to their home, including a funeral wreath and a bloody pig Halloween mask.
They are all charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with a witness. Their lawyers either declined to comment or didn’t immediately return emails seeking comment Wednesday.
The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband’s name on them to their neighbor’s house, planned to break into the couple’s garage to install a GPS device on their car, and posted the couple’s names and address online, advertising things like yard sales and encouraging strangers to knock on the door if the pair wasn’t outside, officials said.
The suspects engaged in a “systematic campaign fueled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company to emotionally and psychologically terrorize this middle-aged couple in Natick,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said at a news conference when charges were announced in June.
An internal investigation was launched after San Jose, California-based eBay was notified by law enforcement of “suspicious actions by its security personnel,” company officials wrote in a prepared statement. The employees were ultimately fired, the company said.
Popp was a senior manager of global intelligence at eBay; Gilbert was senior manager of special operations for eBay’s Global Security Team; Stockwell was manager of eBay’s Global Intelligence Center, and Zea was an eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst in the Global Intelligence Center. Authorities say they were working at eBay at the time of the alleged harassment.
Court documents say the couple was targeted after their newsletter published an article in August 2019 about a lawsuit filed by eBay accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers.
The leading gaming organization and lifestyle brand 100 Thieves just raised $60 million in new funding closing its Series C. This new round of funding has raised the valuation of the organization to about $460 million. John Robinson, president and COO of 100 Thieves, joins Cheddar News to talk about what's next for the company.
The Quorum and Cultique released a new study where moviegoers weighed in on their attitudes on going to the theater right now. Linda Ong, founder of Cultique, and David Herrin, founder and CEO of The Quorum, join Cheddar News to discuss what moviegoers need in order to head back to theaters.
The nation's largest vacation rental management company, Vacasa, made its public debut on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger with TPG Pace Solutions. CEO Matt Roberts joined Cheddar to talk about the company's better-than-expected success and the plans to leverage its IPO to expand the business and refine Vacasa's tech. He noted that with five million second homes across the country, the company has much more room to grow as it currently has just 35,000 rental properties in 400 locations available. Roberts also said that there has been no impact on bookings due to the omicron variant of COVID-19.
Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" is gearing up for a sequel following its earlier this year topping the domestic box office to date. Destin Daniel Cretton will return to write and direct while also taking on additional projects in a multi-year deal.
Online platform Assemble is looking to provide career instruction and inspiration to Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) of all age groups for access to industries they might not have been privy to prior. Actor, activist, and one of Assemble's three co-founders, Jesse Williams, and CEO Cortney Woodruff joined Cheddar's "Between Bells" to discuss the Assemble mission and what people can expect from the program. "There's a lot of jobs that folks don't know even exist in the first place, and what we know is that there are incredible innovators at the peak of their field that are Black and brown – in every single field," Williams noted.
Payoneer CEO Scott Galit joined Wake Up With Cheddar to talk about the company's partnership with Walmart to provide working capital to retailers on Walmart's marketplace.
As the country continues to bounce back from the job losses felt at the start of the pandemic, businesses are still struggling to fill jobs, mainly due to the record number of people who have voluntarily left the workforce. and experts say that the challenge of finding the people to fill those roles will likely follow us well into 2022. Beth Ann Bovino, U.S. Chief Economist at S&P Global Ratings explains what’s behind the ‘Great Resignation’.
Between uncertainty over the Omicron variant, and the possibility of a sooner-than-expected taper from the Fed, it was an especially volatile week for the markets. The release of the November jobs report on Friday, with job growth coming in way lower than estimates also caused movement on the market. Frances Stacy, Director of Strategy at Optimal Capital explains why all of this, combined with Bitcoin’s huge drop over the weekend, could make for another rough week for investors.
It was a chaotic week for the market, as investors reacted to the new omicron variant. Today though is all about jobs. Just ahead of the November jobs report, David Riley, Chief Investment Strategist at Blue Bay Asset management gave a run down of what to expect from the report, and what it could mean for investors.
Developers for the video game "Call of Duty: Warzone" staged a walkout in protest of 12 quality assurance testers being laid off by parent company Activision Blizzard. This marks the latest work stoppage for the embattled game publishing giant.
