eBay will pay $3 million for the corporate cyberstalking of a Massachusetts couple in 2019. Many eBay workers, including executives, cyberstalked the couple when they issued a newsletter criticizing the company. Employees sent the couple a gory pig mask, fetal pig, funeral wreath, live insects, and a book on surviving spouse death as part of the cyberstalking campaign.
On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced the penalties and six crimes committed by the firm. eBay was charged with two stalking offenses via interstate travel, two through electronic communications services, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.
eBay confirmed that Jim Baugh, eBay’s former senior director of safety and security, and six other security team members targeted the couple because they produced a newsletter on eBay seller difficulties. Baugh and other staff went on a harassing campaign to get victims to change the newsletter.
At the couple’s residence, staffers put a GPS monitoring device on their automobile. They also advertised sexual encounters at the victims’ homes on Craigslist. Employees also criticized the newsletter in private and public tweets.
By September 2022, Baugh was sentenced to 57 months in jail, while the other six workers received two-year sentences or home detention.
In a news statement, Acting US Attorney Joshua S. Levy stated eBay committed “absolutely horrific, criminal conduct.” “Ebay employees and contractors put victims through hell in a terrifying campaign to silence their reporting and protect the brand. We pursued every person who turned the victims’ lives upside down with a never-ending nightmare of threatening and illegal acts.”
In addition to paying the penalties, eBay must hire an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years and make “extensive enhancements to its compliance program.”
eBay admitted to the former workers’ misbehavior in a news statement today.
“The company’s conduct in 2019 was wrong and reprehensible,” stated eBay CEO Jamie Iannone in a news statement. Since learning of the 2019 occurrences, eBay has cooperated completely with law enforcement. We continue to apologize to the Steiners for their suffering. Since these occurrences, eBay has hired new management and reinforced its rules, processes, controls, and training.
