eBay Employees Charged With Cyberstalking Critics
eBay’s tumble into an ignoble existence has been fast and furious. This past week we saw six former eBay executives charged with cyberstalking, all of whom had been fired following the company’s August 2019 investigation into allegations they harassed the editor of a newsletter critical of eBay and her husband. Former Chief Communications Officer Steven Wymer was also given the boot, and in September former CEO Devin Wenig exited as well.
The Department of Justice (DoJ)’s 56-page criminal complaint explains the charges of cyberstalking and witness tampering for two eBay former employees, while a separate 16-page information document explains the roles of four additional employees. The accused six are:
- James Baugh, eBay’s former senior director of Safety and Security.
- David Harville, 48, of New York, former director of Global Resiliency.
- Stephanie Popp, 32, of San Jose, former senior manager of Global Intelligence.
- Stephanie Stockwell, 26, of Redwood City, California, former manager of eBay’s Global Intelligence Center (GIC).
- Veronica Zea, 26, of San Jose, a former eBay contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst in the GIC.
- Brian Gilbert, 51, of San Jose, a former senior manager of Special Operations for eBay’s Global Security Team (and a former captain of the Santa Clara Police Department, who retired in May 2018).
The DoJ highlighted in its statement: “Members of the executive leadership team at eBay followed the newsletter’s posts, often taking issue with its content and the anonymous comments underneath the editor’s stories.”
eBay, meanwhile made the point in its statement concerning the employees’ roles in cyberstalking the couple that Wenig did not know “in advance about or authorize the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband. However, as the Company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure …”
Bloomberg has identified the Natick, Massachusetts, victims as Ina Steiner, co-founder and editor of EcommerceBytes, and her husband, David Steiner. The couple wrote about eBay and other online exchanges; some of the pieces were critical of eBay, its services and personnel. These articles were promoted in a daily newsletter sent to its subscriber base and on social networks including Twitter.
The Genesis of the eBay Harassment
The court documents show a text exchange between two eBay executives, who have also been identified by Bloomberg as Wymer and Wenig, critical of the EcommerceBytes newsletter. On April 10, 2019, Wymer sent a text to Wenig advising him that eBay was going to “crush this lady.” Wenig responded, “I couldn’t care less what she says.” He followed up seconds later with, “Take her down.”
And with this exchange, the eBay skulduggery was initiated, according to the documents.
In June 2019, the company retained a consultancy at the direction of Wymer to study and prepare a document titled: “Next Steps: Alternative Digital Methods for Reducing Impact of Ina and David Steiner and the Newsletter.”
In addition, a “Parody Account,” which gave a sound boost to the negative blog posts (much to the chagrin to eBay’s execs), created parodies of eBay docs and generally offended eBay, was in the target scope of eBay’s security team.
eBay employees concluded that the victims and the anonymous social network commentators were operating in a collaborative manner.
The Cyberstalking and Harassment
The harassment began in June 2019 when Gilbert, the retired police captain, traveled using tickets purchased with a credit card other than his own, rented a black SUV and drove from Boston to Natick, where he scrawled the name “fidomaster” (one of the anonymous online accounts) on the couple’s fence.
What he wasn’t counting on was that his visit was recorded by the victim’s home surveillance system, giving them evidence of the harassment from the start.
In July/August, the senior executive team put pressure on Baugh to force the Steiners to stop their negative critiques of and commentary on eBay. Baugh deduced that the parody accounts and Steiners were conspiring to make eBay look bad, but eBay didn’t need anyone’s help to look bad—the company then allegedly embarked on a series of depraved acts.
The eBay employees set up their needed infrastructure, which they tried to shield, hide and misattribute by using “tradecraft” of burner phones, debit cards bought for cash, anonymous social network accounts and WhatsApp to communicate with each other.
The three-part harassment campaign included ordering “anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, including a preserved fetal pig, a bloody pig Halloween mask, a funeral wreath, a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, and pornography—the last of these addressed to the newsletter’s publisher but sent to his neighbors’ homes,” according to the court documents.
These were followed by an online campaign to discredit the victims and included doxing them.
The third and final step was having eBay, via Gilbert, come to the couple’s rescue by stepping in as a former law enforcement officer and creating the perception of goodwill, which eBay hoped would have a lasting positive impact on the couple and their writing.
Their actions worked: The couple called the police. The police investigated. But Gilbert’s goodness turned out to be wrapped in obstruction and witness tampering.
Dissembling With the Police
Gilbert and his cohorts at eBay tried to cover their cyberstalking tracks, creating a convoluted cover story for the Natick and San Jose police departments that should only be found in a Hollywood B-movie. The criminal complaint includes the message-by-message content of the WhatsApp exchanges regarding how they were going to disrupt the investigation, point the finger at a fabricated “person of interest” and come out smelling like a rose.
They came out smelling rather like something one scrapes off their shoe.
The proverbial lesson for all is that silencing your critics via illegal means is a direct route to prosecution in the U.S., which the former eBay employees have discovered as they face the potential of $250,000 fines and prison time.
