A civil case against eBay brought by the founders of a Massachusetts-based e-commerce news site has just been settled. The gist of the case: The company and former executives must acknowledge and pay for what is arguably the most disturbing harassment campaign ever waged by a giant tech company against its critics.
In 2020, six former eBay employees and one contractor were charged with participating in a horrific campaign that included doxing, threats, and delivery of live pests against David and Ina Steiner, the husband-and-wife founders of the Massachusetts-based news site EcommerceBytes. The Steiners regularly wrote about eBay, often in an unflattering lightweight. In 2021, the couple filed a civil lawsuit; eBay he later agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts.
Now the civil case has just reached its final resolution. The Steiners will receive more than $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former eBay CEO Devin Wenig, $500,000 from former eBay executive Wendy Jones and $50,000 from former eBay CEO Steve Wymer.
eBay is also donating $6 million to charity, and an additional $1 million from Wenig goes to a nonprofit that protects First Amendment rights. The company must issue a strongly worded statement condemning the actions of the former employees who were involved.
It’s worth noting that the settlement does not include a confidentiality clause, which means the Steiners can still comment on the case.
“It was a deal breaker from day one,” says Chris Murphy, the Steiners’ attorney at Everett, Mass.-based personal injury firm Scalli Murphy Law. “As journalists and victims, the Steiners have made it clear that they want everyone to see and understand what eBay did to them. And from day one, they have been willing to go to trial on this matter.”
“In a way, it’s a relief that we have some finality,” David Steiner said in an interview with WIRED. “But I think it’s going to take some time to really see what that means in the broader context of a settlement versus a trial. We’ve been really adamant that this type of behavior by Fortune 500 corporations has not gone unchecked.”
Ina Steiner emphasized that the couple ultimately filed a civil lawsuit because they wanted to better understand the culture that precipitated this campaign of harassment, and that by filing the civil lawsuit they gained access to 68,000 documents they otherwise would not have seen. “During federal investigations, we often had no idea, and as victims, we were told little,” she said.
eBay spokespeople responded to WIRED’s statement published on the Internetin which the company offered its “deepest apology” to the Steiner family, condemned employees who “introduced and pleaded guilty to criminal misconduct charges against Ina and David Steiner” and acknowledged the “unprofessional tone of internal communications exhibited – to varying degrees and extents – by Mr. Wenig, Mr. Wymer and Ms. Jones.” The company stressed that up-to-date management is now in charge and that the 2019 incidents “are not representative of eBay’s culture or the thousands of employees around the world today.”
Initial complaints show that the harassment campaign by eBay executives and contractors lasted two months in the summer of 2019. It began with anonymous Twitter calls threatening the Steiners and then quickly escalated to deliveries to the couple’s home. These deliveries included a bloody pig mask, pornography, a package of fly larvae and live spiders, and another package containing live cockroaches. The topic of other packages was death, including a copy of a book on mourning a spouse and a funeral wreath from a local flower shop. All the while, the anonymous Twitter account continued to send harassing messages. As text messages in court documents later showed, these chats and mailings were invented and sent by the defendants.