EBay Inc agreed to pay almost US$50 million to a Massachusetts couple who said former employees of the company targeted them with threats and bizarre anonymous deliveries — including live insects, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig Halloween mask, according to settlement details released on Tuesday. The parties reported reaching a tentative settlement in February as the case was headed to trial, but they were unable to finalize it. David and Ina Steiner last month asked a federal judge to restore the case to the trial calendar and reached a new settlement this month. The agreement with the Steiners, founders of EcommerceBytes, a newsletter covering the e-commerce industry, includes an additional US$7 million in charitable donations, including to organizations supporting First Amendment rights. The settlement contains no confidentiality provision, allowing the Steiners to discuss the case publicly.
The eBay app icon is displayed on a smartphone in Marple Township, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 28, 2023.
“David and I were on the same page that this settlement should and must be made public — as victims who want to prevent something like this from ever happening to anyone else, and as reporters who believe in transparency,” Ina Steiner said on Tuesday in an e-mail. The settlement resolves more than six years of criminal and civil proceedings stemming from the harassment campaign. In their 2021 lawsuit filed in Boston federal court, the Steiners said that the company engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them” to “stifle their reporting on eBay.”
