By Alanna Durkin Richer

Six former eBay Inc. employees have been charged with waging an extensive campaign to terrorize and intimidate the editor and publisher of an online newsletter with threats and disturbing deliveries to their home, including live spiders and cockroaches, federal authorities said Monday.

Executives were upset about the newsletter's coverage, so their employees set out to ruin the lives of the couple who ran the website, sending a funeral wreath, bloody pig face Halloween mask, and other alarming items to their home, authorities said. The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband's name on it to their neighbor's house and planned to break into the couple's garage to install a GPS device on their car, officials said.

"This was a determined, systematic effort by senior employees of a major company to destroy the lives of a couple in Natick all because they published content that company executives didn't like. For a while they succeeded, psychologically devastating these victims for weeks as they desperately tried to figure out what was going on and stop it," Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters.

James Baugh, of San Jose, California, who was eBay's senior director of safety & security, and David Harville, of New York City, who was eBay's director of global resiliency, are charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. The other former eBay employees charged are Stephanie Popp, former senior manager of global intelligence; Brian Gilbert, former senior manager of special operations for eBay's Global Security Team; Stephanie Stockwell, former manager of eBay's Global Intelligence Center; and Veronica Zea, a former eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst in the Global Intelligence Center.

There were no lawyers listed for them in court documents.

Court documents detail how two members of the company's executive leadership team orchestrated a plot to go after the couple after the newsletter published an article in August 2019 about a lawsuit filed by eBay accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers. The article also discussed an executive, referred only in court documents as "Executive 1," according to court documents.

A half-hour after the article was published, "Executive 1" texted another executive, identified as "Executive 2": "(Victim 1) is out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down..now is the time," according to court documents.

An online article with the same headline as the one described in court documents shows the person described as "Executive 1" as eBay's CEO, who was then Devin Wenig.

Wenig stepped down in September and is not charged in the case. On Monday, a person who answered at a phone number listed for Wenig said "we're not interested," before hanging up.

In addition to the disturbing deliveries, the employees set up fake social media accounts to send threatening messages to the couple, authorities said. After the bloody pig mask was delivered, the editor received a message saying: "DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????," according to court documents. They also posted the couple's names and address online, advertising things like yard sales and encouraging strangers to knock on the door if they weren't outside.

Authorities said the staff lied to police about eBay's involvement in the cyberstalking campaign, and lied to company lawyers about their roles. Gilbert, a former police captain in Santa Clara California, even reached out to the couple to offer help in stopping the harassment, authorities said.

"They hoped this 'white knight strategy' would create some good will toward the company, result in more favorable articles, and please eBay's management," said Joseph Bonavolonta, special agent in charge of the FBI office in Boston.

An internal investigation was launched after eBay was notified by law enforcement in August of "suspicious actions by its security personnel," company officials wrote in a prepared statement. The employees were fired in September, the company said.

Wenig said at the time that he was stepping down over differences with the board of directors and the company didn't clarify Monday whether this investigation played a role in his departure.

The committee formed by the company's board of directors to oversee the investigation said eBay "took these allegations very seriously from the outset."

"Upon learning of them, eBay moved quickly to investigate thoroughly and take appropriate action," it said.

Share:
More In Business
Michigan Judge Sentences Walmart Shoplifters to Wash Parking Lot Cars
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
State Department Halts Plan to buy $400M of Armored Tesla Vehicles
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
Goodyear Blimp at 100: ‘Floating Piece of Americana’ Still Thriving
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
Is U.S. Restaurants’ Breakfast Boom Contributing to High Egg Prices?
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
Load More