Perhaps one of the most atrocious and bizarre recent scandals of corporate America is known as "The eBay Stalking Scandal." The actions of eBay's employees and top management were unbelievable, especially for a Fortune 500 company. Not only were the eBay employees acting unethically, but they were acting inhumanely- even some of the most unethical people would be appalled by their actions.
In 1999, Ina and David Steiner, a middle-aged couple living in Natick, Massachusetts, started a website called AuctionBytes to help sellers and small business owners succeed on platforms such as Amazon, Etsy, and eBay. They discussed trends and policy updates in the industry. The Steiners were interested in antiques, collectibles, auctions, and garage sales. Their website was meant to help people with the same passion online. AuctionBytes eventually morphed into what is known today as EcommerceBytes. Click the link to check out EcommerceBytes. Some titles of blogs on the site are "eBay Suppresses Coupon: A Calculated Move to Save Money?," "eBay GTC Renewal Date Fix Upsets Sellers," "eBay RCIO Lawsuit Meant to Curb Seller Exodus to Amazon?," and "eBay Over Billed Sellers in GTC Renewal Glitch." The website contains an even split of both positive and negative content about eBay.
 |
| Ina and David Steiner, the Owners of EcommerceBytes |
EcommerceBytes caught the attention of eBay's top management: CEO Devin Wenig and communications chief Steven Wymer. According New York Times journalist David Streitfeld, Wenig and Wymer "worked to forge a more combative eBay, one that drew less inspiration from the Golden Rule and more from 'The Sopranos.'" From the start, it was obvious that these men were not the most ethical leaders: "When Representative John Lewis tweeted about the civic importance of getting in 'good trouble, necessary trouble,' for instance, Mr.Wymer replied that he had 'another view on how the USA should be governed. My view is equal to your view.'" In addition, Wenig put a pub on the eBay Headquarters campus, which facilitated many employee drinking problems. Having management that believes that getting into trouble is good and encourages drinking at work is a recipe for disaster.
 |
| Devin Wenig, CEO of eBay |
The team of employees responsible for the scandal came from eBay's Global Security and Resiliency Team: James Baugh (45), David Harville (48), Stephanie Popp (32), Veronica Zea (26), Stephanie Stockwell (26), Philip Cooke (55), and Brian Gilbert (52). James Baugh was the ringleader of the operation, as the Senior Director of Safety and Security at eBay. In a New York Times interview with Veronica Zea, he was described as"kind of scary." Once, Baugh found a knife on campus and stabbed a chair with it after mentioning how "a deranged person could have used it to hurt someone." He also engaged in many other dubious activities, such as showing the security team violent movie clips and hiring a lot of pretty blonde women, who were referred to as "Jim's Angels," and firing them for foolish reasons such as "not smiling in front of executives." Baugh often said "No one is supposed to know this... We'll keep it in the circle of trust." Not only was eBay's Global Security and Resilience team unethical, they were downright scary- not the people you would want monitoring your activity.
 |
| James Baugh, eBay's Senior Director of Safety and Security |
In January 2019, "Elliot Management, a hedge fund considered merciless even by Wall Street standards, bought a chunk of eBay and asked for changes. Nobody was safe- especially the chief executive, Devin Wenig. The co-founder of another company that had earlier drawn the attention of Elliot said the experience of looking up the fund online was like 'Google in this thing on your arm and it says, 'You're going to die.''" The pressure of this takeover and fear of losing their jobs likely caused eBay's employees and management to act out of fear rather than reason.
With eBay in a pressure cooker from Elliot Management, the top executives were desperate to keep their jobs. Therefore, having the Steiner's post negative content on their website about eBay was a concern, as their website was pretty popular for a niche blog. In April 2019, Ina Steiner wrote a blog about Wenig's compensation: "his haul of $18 million was 152 times what the average worker got, and [Ida] mildly suggested it was at the expense of eBay sellers." This enraged Wenig, perhaps because it was more of a personal attack, so he sent Wymer a text saying, "We are going to crush this lady." On another occasion, Wenig claimed, "I couldn't care less what she says... Take her down."
The eBay executives faced a common ethical dilemma: facing criticism from the press. eBay needs to keep up a good reputation, especially with Elliot Management putting so much pressure on them. However, the Steiners were releasing negative content about eBay, which could hurt its business. The real question was what to do. If they continue to let the Steiners blog as they have been, eBay could lose business. However, if they do something about it, they could run into ethical issues.
In addition to the Steiners, eBay was concerned about an anonymous gadfly on Twitter by the name of Fidomaster. Fidomaster would comment on Twitter about how eBay is unfair to sellers, as his wife sold on eBay. His comments did not receive many likes, but the security team kept a file on him, as they did the Steiners. Baugh believed that Fidomaster and the Steiners were conspiring to ruin eBay. One of the team members, disguised by the name Marissa who claimed to be a former eBay employee, messaged Fidomaster claiming that she had "extremely damaging videos of executives misbehaving." She tried to convince Fidomaster to pick up the flash drive with the "videos" on them at any hotel of his choice, so he could pass them on to the Steiners. Fidomaster rejected the offer, which only made the security team angrier. Therefore, a member of the security team flew to Natick, Massachusetts where the Steiners resided, and wrote "FIDOMASTER" on their fence.
As time passed, Wenig, Wymer, and Baugh believed more and more that the Steiners were planning to slowly but surely ruin eBay. As Ina continued to criticize eBay, Wymer got angrier. He once texted, "I want her DONE... She is a biased troll who needs BURNED DOWN... I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it must be explored... Whatever. It. Takes." Whatever it takes was Wymer's motto, and indeed he would do whatever it took to stop the Steiners from reporting.
 |
| Steven Wymer, Chief Communications Officer of eBay |
The pressure from top management and Baugh's thirst for revenge was passed down to the Global Security and Resiliency Team. It is however unclear if Wenig ordered the team to take Ina Steiner down or not, or if Wymer acted alone. Regardless, Baugh was the ringleader of the operation, and he was in close contact with Wymer. The team's mission was to "take her down," doing "Whatever. It. Takes." Indeed, they took "whatever it takes" to heart. Their strategy was called "The White Knight Strategy," which had three main parts:
1. Harass the Steiners.
2. Earn their trust by offering eBay's assistance in stopping the harassment.
3. Manipulate them into posting positive content about eBay on EcommerceBytes.
For part one, Stephanie Popp disguised herself as @Tui_Elei, "an eBay user from Samoa who believed that EcommerceBytes had harmed his sales." @Tui_Elei sent Ms. Steiner harassing, violent, and threatening messages, which she ignored. Then, the team then sent the Steiners a mysterious package with the most bizarre contents: a bloody pig Halloween mask from the movie Saw, a book titled Grief Diaries: Surviving the Loss of a Spouse, a funeral wreath in Ina's name, live cockroaches, and live spiders. They almost sent a bloody pig fetus until they were questioned by the supplier, and they though about sending chain saws, human feces, and a dead rat. They also sent pornography to the Steiners' neighbors' doorstep, in David Steiner's name. Fourteen minutes after the delivery, @Tui_Elei sent Ina another message: "DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????" Ina Steeiner "found that someone signer up her email account for dozens of email lists and newsletters; the subject headers included 'the Satanic Temple,' and 'Cat Faeries.' David Steiner received strange calls, such as one that asked him if he wanted to open an "Adam & Eve sex toy franchise."
 |
| Contents of the package sent to the Steiners |
In mid-August, Baugh and Zea flew first-class from California to Massachusetts and stayed at the Ritz Carlton to start the stalking part of their mission. They tried to break into the Steiners' garage to put a GPS on their car, and they followed them around town in rented cars. The team sent pizza deliveries to the Steiners' house at 4:30am, and they posted Craigslist ads announcing estate sales at their house and inviting swingers over at any time day or night. They even doxxed the Steiners' home address. At one point, Brian Gilbert called the Steiners, pretending to be eBay, and offered them assistance in figuring out who was harassing them. They became suspicious, and reported them instead of accepting the invitation. After a couple of days, David Steiner got a picture of the rental car's license plate, which the Natick police traced to Zea, along with a gift card purchased in Silicon Valley that was used to buy the pizzas. Baugh messaged, "They are seeing ghosts now. Lol." However, the Natick police found Zea at the Ritz-Carlton, but she managed to escape.
After they identified the suspect, the Natick police got the F.B.I involved, and eBay's lawyers started their own private investigation. The security team made this task difficult, as they did whatever it took to cover-up and deceive investigators. They created a list of "persons of interest" in Silicon Valley who made threats against eBay before, sent emails to make it seem as if they had recently discovered the @Tui_Elei account, made up stories, lied in interviews, and erased data from their phones.
Once they found out the truth, eBay fired Wymer and those involved on the Global Security and Resilience Team. Zea's placement agency fired her, and Wenig resigned with a $57 million severance package. eBay's private investigation concluded that Wenig was not involved in the action of harassing and stalking the Steiners, thus making him free of charges. James Baugh and David Harville "were indicted on one count of conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts each of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking though through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts (Baugh) and one count (Harville) of destruction, alteration, and falsification of records in a federal investigation... The charges of conspiracy to commit stalking and stalking each carry a sentence of up to five years of supervised release, a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution. The witness tampering charges also carry the potential for forfeiture."Philip Cooke, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, Veronica Zea, and Stephanie Stockwell "pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses." This made it very difficult for these people to get jobs after eBay. Zea was fired from the company she was working for after eBay once the case hit the media. As a result, she had to move back in with her parents. On the contrary, Wenig was re-elected to the General Motors Board of Directors and Wymer became the CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Their employers both disapproved of the case but did not care enough to have it affect their jobs.
 |
| Veronica Zea, former intelligence analyst at eBay |
The harassment scarred Ina and David Steiner psychologically, causing them to continue on living in perpetual fear. David Steiner spoke of the impact: "We have eight security cameras around our house. Now we have door alarms that sound every time we open the front and back doors. We take securitious routes any time we go places. We are very aware of people around us and we drive with a video camera on the very rear of our car to make sure no one is tailing us." The eBay employees ruined the comfort and safety of their home, something that no sum of money or apology can fix.
It is hard to believe that people actually found stalking, harassment, and terrorism an acceptable response to criticism. The security team's goal was to remove negative press about eBay, when all they ended up doing was worsening eBay's reputation, as the case was reported on by many key news sources. It is also interesting how Wenig and Wymer were able to find jobs on the same level as the ones they had at eBay. In fact, Wenig appeared to make money off of the case, as he received a hefty severance package and got a new job. Perhaps the people affected the most were the Steiners, as their lives were forever changed for the worst, and they were the only ones doing they job ethically.
Sources:
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html
Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/07/lawsuit-ebay-tried-to-terrorize-stalk-and-silence-couple-that-ran-news-site/
Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-cyberstalking-harassment-campaign/
The United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/six-former-ebay-employees-charged-aggressive-cyberstalking-campaign-targeting-natick
EcommerceBytes: https://www.ecommercebytes.com/
CNBC Television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i21SlZjLjCI
WCVB Channel 5 Boston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkwQJO97oaM
Image Sources:
Comments
Post a Comment