The most disturbing corporate harassment campaign in recent tech history has a price. eBay and three of its former executives will pay nearly $56m to the couple they set out to destroy for writing a critical newsletter.
David and Ina Steiner of Natick, Massachusetts, run EcommerceBytes, a small newsletter that covers online selling. In 2019, their coverage annoyed senior eBay executives enough that the company mounted a campaign to silence them. Six years and a criminal case later, the civil suit is finally settled.
What they were sent
The details still read like fiction. eBay staff sent live cockroaches and spiders to the Steiners’ home, along with a funeral wreath, a bloody pig mask and a book about surviving the death of a spouse. They mailed pornographic magazines in David’s name to a neighbour. They threatened the couple online through fake accounts.
Then it turned physical. Employees flew from California to Massachusetts to surveil the couple and tried to fit a GPS tracker to their car. One plan, never carried out, was to send a “Samoan gang” to their house. The trigger, in part, was an article headlined “eBay CEO Devin Wenig Earns 152 Times That of Employees.”
