8 ms·

Six eBay executives and employees charged over alleged cyberstalking campaign

638 points by bbatsell 6y ago

catalogia 6y ago
> “I don’t think I would characterize the conduct as rogue, because as seen in the complaint, the directive to do something about this goes pretty high up the chain within eBay,” said Lelling. The couple then received a host of deliveries aimed at intimidating them. “These deliveries included fly larvae and live spiders, a box of live cockroaches, a sympathy wreath on the occasion of the death of a loved one, a book of advice on how to survive the death of a spouse, pornography mailed to their next door neighbors but in the couple’s names, Halloween masks featuring the face of the bloody pig, and the pig fetus which was ordered, but after an inquiry by the supplier, thankfully, wasn’t ever sent,” Lelling said. Some of these things basically constitute death threats, and the orders to do it came from up top. What is the meaningful difference between eBay and a mafia? That eBay doesn't make good on their threats (as far as we know)? The whole organization should be dismantled for this.
- smt88 6y ago
  I have long thought there should be a "death penalty" for corporations. The "execution" would be forced replacement of the entire C-suite. Additionally, the CEO would be barred from the C-suite or Board positions forever. This punishment would be reserved for corporations that knowingly kill people, such as pharma pushing opioids or Boeing hiding flaws in their planes.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    "Corporations are people" comes up quit a bit, but corporations don't have three strikes laws that sequester their life for multiple decades. That being said this sounds like something the people involved should be held accountable for.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      That cliche complaint about corporations are people forgets that it is better thought of as "people via transitive property". And this sort of misconduct is more a personal conspiracy than company malfeasance. The shareholders would be well within their rights to sue all of the executives involved.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    Needs clawback of golden parachutes otherwise there's little risk involved in sociopathic management.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - TheBobinator 6y ago
    Public corporations grant their investors and executive management immunity against such charges unless it can be traced directly to their involvement and even then, most of the time someone is made into a scapegoat and hung. Much of this is out of necessity. The problem stems from privatizing the profits and socializing the losses; people want accountability. I think the correct approach is if a corporation wants to be a c-corp, they need to pay 2\3rds profits through approved accounting mechanisms to non-management staff which can include things like company stock, and should include requirements about openness of the books with staff. The "Public" seldom owns a company, and I am sure the public is very interested in making sure other people are rewarded for their hard work vs investorship. What you end up with is people have disposable income to invest in things they care about, and thus, the executive management is motivated not to do BS crap like this. It does make it more difficult to get large sources of capital together, but it also forces companies to the whim of people and investorship and employee's which is a much more tenable balance.
  - ponker 6y ago
    There should also be the death penalty (no quotation marks) for sufficiently evil corporate misconduct. Not a case like this, but something like Purdue Pharmaceuticals knowingly creating the American opioid crisis should be more than enough destruction to justify lethal injections for the top principals of the company.
  - nradov 6y ago
    In cases of serious fraud the SEC does sometimes bar individuals from being an officer or director of any publicly traded company.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
  Perhaps shareholders would take their oversight responsibilities seriously if there were real financial consequences.
ghaff 6y ago
It's hard to know where to even begin with this story. Yes, it's utterly horrible and scummy behavior. Let's just get that out of the way. But who on earth could have thought that morals notwithstanding it was even a vaguely sensible thing to do from a personal perspective to undertake a campaign of harassment that you'd think they must have known if it got out would result (in a minimum) at them being run out the company and likely blackballed from the industry. The article does suggest this may have gone pretty far up which, I suppose, says something about the entire leadership team if true.
- AzzieElbab 6y ago
  My first thought was - oh that is what people with these bizzaire job titles do
- sct202 6y ago
  It's like insane that this is a giant company full of people who should know better. Like how do you even talk to a single other person and have them not say something about how this seems like a bad idea.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    >have them not say something about how this seems like a bad idea. I like to think I'd use other language and immediately report them--if only for my own protection.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Reporting them is the opposite of "for your own protection": they'll turn their harassment on you!
      - ghaff 6y ago
        As soon as they've told you what they're going to do, you're probably an accomplice if you keep it to yourself. Your career at the company is probably toast at that point anyway. At least a paper trail helps to protect you from criminal complaints.
rideontime 6y ago
> Two unnamed executive are included in the complaint that had roles above Baugh. eBay just released a statement[0] which alludes to both the Chief Communications Officer and the CEO (!) having been involved. edit: Another article[1] provides more details, including that "an eBay executive told Baugh that he wanted to 'crush' those responsible for the newsletter while another executive told Baugh to 'take her down.'" One of these must be the "inappropriate communications" by the CEO, Devin Wenig, mentioned in eBay's statement. edit 2: Still more details in another[2] article, including quotes from communications between "Executive 1" and "Executive 2." [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebay-inc-issues-statement-regarding-162400706.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebay-inc-issues-statement-reg... [1] https://natick.wickedlocal.com/news/20200615/6-former-ebay-employees-face-federal-charges-after-extensive-campaign-of-harassment-against-natick-couple https://natick.wickedlocal.com/news/20200615/6-former-ebay-e... [2] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/15/metro/six-former-ebay-employees-charged-federal-cyberstalking-case-targeting-natick-couple/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/15/metro/six-former-ebay...
- tsomctl 6y ago
  I buy a ton of things off eBay. This is seriously making me not want to do business with them again.
  - afandian 6y ago
    Not having read / watched the press brefing my first reaction to this comment was, I admit, a bit eye-rolly. Then I watched it. If that is your reaction, seriously, go and watch it. It really is an extraordinary set of allegations. It's nine minutes long and it just gets weirder and weirder.
    - rideontime 6y ago
      And he's still leaving details out! I can't wait to read the complaint itself.
  - thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
    Yup, same here.
rdtwo 6y ago
Anyone know the blog/newsletter that was victim to this? I want to go read their stuff. Clearly it’s good stuff if the company was this threatened
- summitsummit 6y ago
  also looking for this but haven't found it yet
- waterfowl 6y ago
  I looked on reddit -- seems like it is https://www.ecommercebytes.com/ https://www.ecommercebytes.com/ and maybe a sub-thing "auctionbytes"
yrral 6y ago
Does anyone know the newsletter/blog posts that caused these employees to retaliate like this? Obviously no matter what they said this behavior is 100% not acceptable under any circumstances; these 6 employees are definitely in psychopath territory. However, I'm curious as to what exactly triggered this kind of retaliation.
crazygringo 6y ago
Not even mentioning that one of those charged used to be a police captain... ...but what the hell is wrong with people that they take their job so seriously that they'd personally harass the people who run a newsletter that's critical of the company they work for? And that six of them would do it together? There are no lives at stake here. Nobody's curing cancer or saving democracy here, where maybe I could at least understand how somebody might take criticism as something immoral that needed to be fought against, even if I deeply disagreed with the method. But I just can't even fathom why these six people even cared enough in the first place about some newsletter criticizing them. Where are their psychological work-life boundaries? Why would they even care? This is just so beyond bizarre. It's like some kind of pathological level of psychological identification with your company. Your job is just a job, folks.
- guenthert 6y ago
  Well, I'd think for a good share of employees, outside the minimum wage earners, their job might be more than just a job. Even if they just put in the contractually agreed upon time, that'll be a significant part of their life. And it doesn't need co-dependence or the equivalent of Stockholm syndrome or "buyer's remorse" to explain a willingness to associate with the employer. It certainly helps with the workplace ambiance. That doesn't mean they typically are willing to commit a crime or go full-on-psychopath as here.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Of course. You can have healthy emotional involvement with your job while still setting healthy boundaries. That's what maturity is. You ought to take pride on a job well-done, enjoy being part of a team with coworkers, and feel that your company does something positive. An online auction site is a positive thing, one reason among many being that it promotes reuse rather than throwing things out. But to harass someone, to break laws? That's beyond the healthy boundary. That's why boundaries exist. That's gone to unhealthy self-identification with the company. Which is what baffles me so much. When people go from "it's more than a job" to "I'll commit crimes for this company", it's baffling and scary.
- 6y ago
waterfowl 6y ago
These are the newsletters in question. Looks like a normal niche trade community kind of site. https://www.ecommercebytes.com/about/ https://www.ecommercebytes.com/about/ Imagine being a (literally) mom and pop internet newsletter and having a giant come after you personally w/ lots of malice. Reminds me of nissan computer getting arm twisted by the datsun motor company.
- libria 6y ago
  (Slightly in jest) I was annoyed that minecraft.com doesn't link to the game. It's some random company... that is actually in the craft of real world mining. I'm surprised Nissan was not able to settle w/ mom and pop. Branding is worth millions. I doubt they were being stingy; were they holding out on principle? Were mom and pop asking for a silly amount? It's also amusing a North American corporation was able to wrest the .amazon domain away from, well, the real Amazonians in Brazil.
  - waterfowl 6y ago
    Nissan sued the guy(named nissan) for infringement so I think he got pissed. Notably his small computer shop(bearing his name) predated Nissan operating as Nissan(vs. Datsun) in America. Similar things -- peloton.com is not the smartbike, chopt.com is not the salad place(but a sailboat sales company).
    - Plough_Jogger 6y ago
      Chopt appears to sell primarily commercial powerboats.
    - poyu 6y ago
      Also MikeRoweSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft
    - matt-attack 6y ago
      Why wouldn't the inventor of Peloton have just come up w/ a name for which he could obtain a .com domain name?
julianeon 6y ago
Two of the people charged were the former director of safety and security and the former eBay director of global resiliency. This is one of those cases where having a ham sandwich in the position would've been better. But seriously, those officials were supposed to save the company from this: literally their job. They should have been bringing down the banhammer on anyone even considering this destructive crime - not perpetrating it.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  "literally their job" The first thing I thought of was the recent case where Apple's executive in charge of insider trading rule compliance was indicted for insider trading.
cardfret 6y ago
I used to work at ebay (not in the US). The company has quite tolerant culture in terms of several things which any respectable public should never tolerate[sexual harassment, use of racial slurs, etc...] There were also anonymous complaints which essentially turned into a witch hunt led by the team leads to figure out who complained. Most of my colleagues were super nice and excellent professionally but those 1-2 despicable human beings and the tolerant behaviour made the environment toxic as hell.
calibas 6y ago
There's a whole subculture of the internet obsessed with "gang stalking" and they're usually dismissed as just being paranoid. I wonder if at least a small number of cases are actually occurring, and we should be taking the whole thing more seriously... I mean, the facts in this case are more or less the same as what people describe as "gang stalking".
- elliekelly 6y ago
  Honestly, if I knew this couple and they tried to tell me even half of what had happened I would have thought they were absolutely bonkers. How do you even make that phone call to police? Knowing you’re going to sound like a crazy person. I can’t even imagine the stress they must have felt because there is no chance detectives believed their story right out of the gate.
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    > How do you even make that phone call to police? One of the incidents was when they caught people breaking into their garage to plant a GPS tracker on their car. This seems like a good inroads to the other charges.
simplicio 6y ago
In the movies, when a multi-billion dollar company seeks to destroy a rival, they hire some sort of intimidating "fixer" played by Liam Nielson who hacks their bank accounts to destroy their finacnes, frames them for crimes they didn't commit and murders their pets. In real life, apparently, a team of six people basically come up with a bunch of ideas that wouldn't be out of place in a prank war between rival college fraternities that's gone a little too far.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  sending pornography to thier neighbours with their names on it is one (very small) step above swatting them, IMO. If there's any justice (1) people will do time and (2) they will win a huge civil suit against eBay. At least the latter is likely if not the former...
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    It is still pretty damn bad, sexual harassment and libel but miles away from SWATing. That is essentially attempted murder and a credible attempt to try to inflict permanent mental damage. The fact that the police are so trigger happy and bad at assessing the scene for consistency to be a more reliable and safer option than trying to hire a hitman has long been an obvious sign of police reform being desperately needed for years.
  - bityard 6y ago
    I wouldn't call the difference very small... Unsolicited porn is mildly embarrassing at best. SWATting almost always results in _at least_ weeks, months or a lifetime of PTSD thereafter, bodily injuries from the force of being physically restrained even if not resisting, and significant property damage running into the thousands of dollars. If you have any dogs that will try to protect their family, the police do not have protocols for containing them, they simply shoot them. SWAT missions can also end in the deaths of suspects due to over-zealous officers or poor communication in the heat of the moment. I know which one I would take if given the choice.
    - 6y ago
DonHopkins 6y ago
>Popp was eBay’s senior manager of global intelligence, Stockwell was the company’s manager of global intelligence center (GIC), Zea was a contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC, and Gilbert was a senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team. Maybe hiring dirty psycho ex-cops and giving them carte blanch authority is just eBay's approach to "Artificial Intelligence"?
cycomanic 6y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding job-titles, but how does a 32 y.o. become the senior manager of global intelligence and moreover a 26 y.o. the company’s manager of global intelligence center. I mean the job descriptions sound like their are one level below the directors (also considering the two directors involved). Considering that the 26 y.o. was 25 last year, she would have been out of uni maybe 2 years ago? Is that normal?
- sct202 6y ago
  Maybe they were hired because they would blindly follow orders.
- lesdeuxmagots 6y ago
  IC -> manager -> director -> vp 4ish years to promote up, especially the first two level levels. Velocity isn't all that crazy.
  - andreilys 6y ago
    Yeah maybe at a small company, but not one the size of eBay.
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      Is eBay that undesirable a place to work for now in SV?
      - abawany 6y ago
        I had a (thankfully) short stint there as part of an organizational mess that swept me up a few years ago: it was a very painful experience. Clearcase, old undocumented code that you were not allowed to reformat because it would generate too many diffs, database as a message bus, etc. The day I left was one of my happiest ones that year.
        londons_explore 6y ago
DonHopkins 6y ago
For what it's worth, at least they gave the eBay vendor who mailed the bloody pig head mask to the victim a great review: "A++++ Great seller and fast shipping! I hope to do business with you again."
cycomanic 6y ago
In some weird way the whole story is a pretty big acclamation for the newsletter though. I mean if you get directors of a multi-billion dollar company going after you personally for what you write.
seemslegit 6y ago
How is this not front-page national news ?
- seemslegit 6y ago
  Hmm apparently Devin Wenig was the CEO of a Reuters division about a decade ago.
- rchaud 6y ago
  The story was posted less than 2 hours ago. Local news breaks much earlier than national. National news will eventually pick this up; even in the currently congested news cycle, this story is too bizarre for it not to.
  - seemslegit 6y ago
    > Local news breaks much earlier than national. On federal cases involving a multi-billion household name company ? Not to my experience but perhaps.
    - anigbrowl 6y ago
      Give it 24 hours. There's a lot of competition.
      - selimthegrim 6y ago
        It's already made the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/ebay-employees-stalking-charges-spiders-cockroaches-pig-mask https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/ebay-empl...
      - rchaud 6y ago
        Here's the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/technology/ebay-cyberstalking-with-cockroaches-and-bloody-pig-face.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/technology/ebay-cyberstal...
- 6y ago
glitcher 6y ago
Sounds like the content the couple published about eBay really struck a nerve. I would like to see that content gain more widespread attention as a result, since it may be something worth looking into more closely. Does anyone have original sources of the content? If it was linked in the article I missed it. EDIT: another commentor posted a link to their website, but there are many articles involving eBay. Makes me wonder which ones specifically caused the most friction? https://www.ecommercebytes.com/ https://www.ecommercebytes.com/
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  Next big challenge for these folks: Slashdot sues them for stealing their .css file, and Geocities piles on with a snarky amicus brief.
- mundo 6y ago
  I read through a few recent posts (trying to understand how this absolutely bizarre story could've come about) and it seems like the current point of contention is "Managed Payments", which appears to be a euphemism for ebay raising fees later this year. However, the longevity of the newsletter and the viciousness of the harassment make me assume this must be a personal issue.
creaghpatr 6y ago
And here I was thinking Kenton from "Devs" was an unrealistic character. *Devs ep 1 and 2 spoilers in the article https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/devs-kenton-character-episode-2-explained-spoilers-recap https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/devs-kenton-character-...
lvs 6y ago
This is some HBO Silicon Valley level insanity. What the ...
- jetrink 6y ago
  It reminded me more of Tiger King: a group of people driven by a petty feud to commit increasingly spiteful and illegal actions against a couple who make their lives at work difficult.
mariuolo 6y ago
If these actions were sanctioned from high enough figures in the hierarchy, doesn't it mean they make the company as highly liable? That couple is going to get a fat payout.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
A reminder: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
wyck 6y ago
And yet ebay stock is at a near all time high, with this kind of corporate culture in place? We really live in bizarre times.
ponker 6y ago
I'd bet a paycheck that the CEO was involved. No other way that a group of senior execs could all get on board with what was obviously a moronic idea with a staggeringly bad personal risk/reward ratio. The way this happens is that people who are used to treating CEOs like religious prophets hear an offhand comment from the CEO and go way too fucking far with it.
ycombonator 6y ago
> “The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized 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 from the company,” eBay said. That’s all I had to read. It had to come from the top to be this organized.
ww520 6y ago
The plot is movie material. I bet there's a book deal(s) coming up somewhere.
- TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago
  There's gonna be a horror movie remake 4 years. Probably.
sarah_jackson 6y ago
What is wrong with people these days?!?
downerending 6y ago
Laws are for other people. It's all the rage these days.
shervinafshar 6y ago
I tried to find an official response from the company to no success through their CS so I asked the community-driven forums. After receiving some pedantic let-me-copy-paste-a-sentence-from-article-you-just-posted, I found the closest thing that I could get to an official response: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/A-message-from-Jordan-Jordan-Sweetnam-SVP-GM-North-America/ba-p/31012551 https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/A-message-from-J...
- notavalleyman 6y ago
  Here is the official comment https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-inc-issues-statement-regarding-indictments-of-previously-terminated-employees/ https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-inc-issues-stateme...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 6y ago
It is ironic they did all that because people talked bad about the company and here we are a couple of years later and people only talk bad about the company.
throwawayLcdQ 6y ago
created this throwaway to say: I worked for a month at eBay and it was an utter shitshow. I came in to replace a guy who built a prototype app without version control, which wrote uploaded files onto the same hard drive that the app ran on. first thing I did is I put the code into git on my local machine. a few days after that, the hard drive had too many files uploaded, and it overwrote the code base. the guy who left set the project up to fail, not realizing he had done so. total unprofessional BS. the only reason the app could be restored at all is because I noticed this rookie mistake and put everything under version control immediately, on my first day. (the guy who left had turned in his work machine and it was probably already wiped.) did they thank me? no. did they at least speak to me in a professional manner? also no. just one data point, of course, but my impression of eBay was that it was totally toxic and not a place where managers needed to know anything at all about what they were doing in order to get ahead.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  Were you at least given a stern talk about the wasteful nature of version control software?
wgerard 6y ago
Wild. I'm like 99% positive I know the couple and the newsletter they targeted, because I used to work for an ecommerce company that also came under fire from said couple semi-frequently. Of course, like adults, we just rolled our eyes a little bit when it was particularly over-the-top and tried to use our rational heads to determine whether the criticism was warranted or not. Truthfully, I think they kept us in check and I'm glad they exist. If we had done anything even close to this, we would've been fired immediately. To be even more blunt, I think I would've been fired for interacting with them AT ALL, even just a strongly-worded email. Just a little wild to see how differently people react to the same exact situation.
rkagerer 6y ago
My experience as a buyer and seller on eBay has been going downhill the last few years. Reading this story sickens me, and makes me not want to do business on their platform anymore. I hope they nail the top execs who encouraged the behavior. Even in the unlikely-looking scenario they weren't complicit, they ought to be fired for allowing such an unprofessional culture to fester under their watch.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  My wife and I have a fledgling reselling business on the side, and Mercari is a far superior experience in every way. It's not as full featured as eBay, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.
  - chipperyman573 6y ago
    How is your experience with buyer disputes? That's the biggest issue I hear about on ebay
    - bdcravens 6y ago
      Haven't had many, because they have a stronger policy. The item is tracked, and if it's delivered to the proper address, the only way they can get a refund is either for damage or for not as described. Buyer submits proof to Mercari, and they make the decision.
  - rkagerer 6y ago
    How big is the audience compared to eBay?
    - bdcravens 6y ago
      Statistics I've seen say there are about 15M monthly users, but not all are in the US (it started in Japan about 7 years ago). Mercari says it has about 45M downloads in the US. https://www.mercari.com/about/ https://www.mercari.com/about/ eBay has about 10x that number of "active" users https://www.statista.com/statistics/242235/number-of-ebays-total-active-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/242235/number-of-ebays-t...
jxramos 6y ago
Other than speaking poorly about ebay what specifically did the so called Natick couple present as a threat to ebay or to these criminals individually? Anyone have a link to the newsletter that was being published? Should be useful to browse a little of it to see what the threat to ebay was exactly.
hashmal 6y ago
He was responsible for way too many bugs I guess.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seemslegit 6y ago
That's not cyberstalking - that's actual, physical, real-life stalking.
jdright 6y ago
eBay is such a terrible company (in part inherited from PayPal). There is no instance of dealing with then were I had plenty of headaches. I just hate the thinking to have to do anything with these companies again and any service that requires PayPal just lose me as a client on the sight of PayPal logo.
dgellow 6y ago
How much has to go wrong in a company to arrive at a situation like this. That's the craziest company story I ever read. From The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21291666/ebay-employees-arrested-journalist-harassment https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21291666/ebay-employees-a...
beepboopbeep 6y ago
What the hell?
nknealk 6y ago
There are several SEC filings around the departure of the CEO in Sept 2019[1][2] that line up with with the timeline mentioned in this article. Here's the relevant snippet from the 8-K: "On September 24, 2019, the Company and Mr. Wenig entered into a letter agreement regarding his departure (the “Wenig Letter”). Pursuant to the terms of the Wenig Letter, in exchange for his execution and non-revocation of a release of claims against the Company, the Company agreed to provide Mr. Wenig with (1) the payments required to be made to him under his letter agreement with the Company dated September 29, 2014 upon a termination without cause, which letter agreement was originally filed with..." The key bit is that the CEO stepping down triggered a severance agreement for termination without cause. This lines up with the reporting that he engaged in unethical behavior and had to be forced out. [1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519254832/d806459d8k.htm https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/0001... [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519254832/d806459dex101.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519...
- mulmen 6y ago
  I’m confused. How is unethical behavior not cause for termination? This reads like doublespeak.
  - 0xEFF 6y ago
    They chose to pay his severance instead of disclosing they had an unethical CEO for 5 years.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Most likely one of two ways: 1. His employment contract specifies what reasons may justify a "termination for cause", and this wasn't listed. (1a. eBay didn't want to have to prove that the conduct here met the definition of a specified "for cause" cause.) 2. eBay could have terminated him for cause, but intentionally terminated him for no cause instead in hopes of avoiding negative publicity.
    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
dmix 6y ago
Companies building 'intelligence' and external-facing security wings have large potential for abuse and need to be very careful. Just like big private tech companies wading into censorship and politics, you have to have strong values from leadership and a strong internal cultural to prevent any sort of abuse of power. These sorts of things are minefields. One of the most common forms of abuse is when it's used like some personal weapon against pet enemies - merely because executives or employees don't like certain groups or want to silence them. Which seems to be the case here. It's a difficult balance, so if it's going to exist at all they need to invest heavily in making sure they are acting ethically at all times. Either bring the clamps down or get rid of it entirely.
aaron695 6y ago
I'm impressed there seems to be quite a wide range of bloody pig masks to chose from. There are whole other worlds out there. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bloody+pig+mask https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bloody+pig+mask (Also interesting the police have chosen an angle to take the photo of the bloody pig mask and the uncanny valley effect (which is photos are scarier than IRL) to make it look it's worst)
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  Hotline Miami leftovers?
jb775 6y ago
Pornography mailed to neighbors...bloody pig mask...box delivered w/ live cockroaches....This story is clickbait GOLD
vondur 6y ago
This is absolutely insane. How could people that are capable of acting like this end up as heads of a huge tech company? It's as if they are literally acting like children.
throwawebaydev 6y ago
Ebay third party developer here. The couple in question are the Steiner’s who run the ecommercebytes and auctionbytes blogs. I don’t advocate, at all, what the ebay execs did, but I will say that the steiners are completely vindictive people who use their platform to hurt people they don’t agree with. They are not innocent, and their so called journalism isn’t anything more than hate mongering. Again, I don’t think they should be harassed, but in essence, they get away with harassment everyday. Their blog is full of negativity and people constantly berating ebay employees.
- stolen_biscuit 6y ago
  Can you link to some of these extremely negative articles on their blogs please?
- raincom 6y ago
  Please post some instances of their "berating ebay employees".
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ponker 6y ago
As always, the CEO managed to keep himself at arms length and isn’t going to jail even though these suckers might.
- greenyoda 6y ago
  The CEO could very well be the ultimate target of this investigation, and could end up in prison. In cases like this, the prosecutors frequently offer the lower-level suspects leniency if they cooperate with the prosecution of the high-level suspect. What we're seeing here could just be the beginning of a case that could last for a long time, with evidence against the CEO accumulating at each step. The CEO is probably getting very nervous right now. Maybe his nervousness will make him commit some more crimes, like lying to the FBI or trying to destroy evidence.
  - ponker 6y ago
    True, but usually the smart CEOs bosses etc. give instructions coded in a way that can seem vague in a court of law (“We need to do something about Tony”) but are not at all vague to their subordinates. This is why you see Mob bosses frequently get 20 year sentences while their henchmen get life without parole because they can’t be conclusively tied to the murder.
luord 6y ago
Why? Why would anyone do this? What needs to happen for people to harass someone over some words on the internet that didn't harm anyone? Letting people have opinions seems like it would be easy.
sizzle 6y ago
Someone please help me understand how a small 2 person newsletter run out of a home in the suburbs was able to provoke high ranking and educated (one is a Columbia Law School JD) tech executives into seeing absolute red to the point of commiting brazen and shockingly criminal black-ops style missions that seem more reasonably explained by having psychosis or mental illness than taking your job too seriously. Did they simply think they wouldn't get caught, blinded by their privilege and ability to get basically anything they want in life with little consequence given their wealth and status/power ? Strong God complex vibes from the executives and Stockholm Syndrome behaviors from their subordinates. (Read the actual court filing, the WhatsApp convos between the individual are wild...)
TwoNineFive 6y ago
Holy shit this is nuclear. I shy away from hyperbolic statements, but this is front-page news and there will/should be longer-term fallout. This is an example of high-tech corporations using their corporate might to terrorize not just private individuals, but individuals engaged in journalism. The plausible deniability is gone; these were C-suite people and entire departments were involved. NEWS people are going to be all over this at multiple angles: Big-tech uses private data to terrorize, intimidate, and control. When big-tech goes after small-time journalists. Profiles of executives and the fallout for their careers. You can bet there will be a multi-million dollar settlement from eBay. This story has legs.
neilv 6y ago
If the allegations are true, what's surprising to me is how comically incompetent the accused were at being ruthless. I'm glad the victims weren't targeted by a more competent sociopath, or it might've been one step to being neutralized via financial ruin, death in the family, or being framed for some horrible crime.
nullc 6y ago
The strategy by ebay here was less dumb than the article makes it sound. They were harassing the victims while pretending to be disgruntled ebay sellers. Their plan was to step in, as ebay, and help track down and stop the harassment, thereby earning the victims trust and goodwill. They hoped that the goodwill would get the victims to publish less negative stuff about ebay and that it would cause the victim to identify the operator of an anonymous troll account (which they seemed to believe was the victim or at least someone working closely with the victim). I think their goal in learning the identity of the anonymous troll account operator was to take legal action against them. They might have gotten away with it too except the victims got a photograph and an accurate license tag for one of the ebay employee's rental cars.

638 points by bbatsell 6y ago

> “I don’t think I would characterize the conduct as rogue, because as seen in the complaint, the directive to do something about this goes pretty high up the chain within eBay,” said Lelling. The couple then received a host of deliveries aimed at intimidating them. “These deliveries included fly larvae and live spiders, a box of live cockroaches, a sympathy wreath on the occasion of the death of a loved one, a book of advice on how to survive the death of a spouse, pornography mailed to their next door neighbors but in the couple’s names, Halloween masks featuring the face of the bloody pig, and the pig fetus which was ordered, but after an inquiry by the supplier, thankfully, wasn’t ever sent,” Lelling said. Some of these things basically constitute death threats, and the orders to do it came from up top. What is the meaningful difference between eBay and a mafia? That eBay doesn't make good on their threats (as far as we know)? The whole organization should be dismantled for this.

smt88 6y ago
I have long thought there should be a "death penalty" for corporations. The "execution" would be forced replacement of the entire C-suite. Additionally, the CEO would be barred from the C-suite or Board positions forever. This punishment would be reserved for corporations that knowingly kill people, such as pharma pushing opioids or Boeing hiding flaws in their planes.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  "Corporations are people" comes up quit a bit, but corporations don't have three strikes laws that sequester their life for multiple decades. That being said this sounds like something the people involved should be held accountable for.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    That cliche complaint about corporations are people forgets that it is better thought of as "people via transitive property". And this sort of misconduct is more a personal conspiracy than company malfeasance. The shareholders would be well within their rights to sue all of the executives involved.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Needs clawback of golden parachutes otherwise there's little risk involved in sociopathic management.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- TheBobinator 6y ago
  Public corporations grant their investors and executive management immunity against such charges unless it can be traced directly to their involvement and even then, most of the time someone is made into a scapegoat and hung. Much of this is out of necessity. The problem stems from privatizing the profits and socializing the losses; people want accountability. I think the correct approach is if a corporation wants to be a c-corp, they need to pay 2\3rds profits through approved accounting mechanisms to non-management staff which can include things like company stock, and should include requirements about openness of the books with staff. The "Public" seldom owns a company, and I am sure the public is very interested in making sure other people are rewarded for their hard work vs investorship. What you end up with is people have disposable income to invest in things they care about, and thus, the executive management is motivated not to do BS crap like this. It does make it more difficult to get large sources of capital together, but it also forces companies to the whim of people and investorship and employee's which is a much more tenable balance.
- ponker 6y ago
  There should also be the death penalty (no quotation marks) for sufficiently evil corporate misconduct. Not a case like this, but something like Purdue Pharmaceuticals knowingly creating the American opioid crisis should be more than enough destruction to justify lethal injections for the top principals of the company.
- nradov 6y ago
  In cases of serious fraud the SEC does sometimes bar individuals from being an officer or director of any publicly traded company.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
Perhaps shareholders would take their oversight responsibilities seriously if there were real financial consequences.

ghaff 6y ago

It's hard to know where to even begin with this story. Yes, it's utterly horrible and scummy behavior. Let's just get that out of the way. But who on earth could have thought that morals notwithstanding it was even a vaguely sensible thing to do from a personal perspective to undertake a campaign of harassment that you'd think they must have known if it got out would result (in a minimum) at them being run out the company and likely blackballed from the industry. The article does suggest this may have gone pretty far up which, I suppose, says something about the entire leadership team if true.

AzzieElbab 6y ago
My first thought was - oh that is what people with these bizzaire job titles do
sct202 6y ago
It's like insane that this is a giant company full of people who should know better. Like how do you even talk to a single other person and have them not say something about how this seems like a bad idea.
- ghaff 6y ago
  >have them not say something about how this seems like a bad idea. I like to think I'd use other language and immediately report them--if only for my own protection.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Reporting them is the opposite of "for your own protection": they'll turn their harassment on you!
    - ghaff 6y ago
      As soon as they've told you what they're going to do, you're probably an accomplice if you keep it to yourself. Your career at the company is probably toast at that point anyway. At least a paper trail helps to protect you from criminal complaints.

rideontime 6y ago

> Two unnamed executive are included in the complaint that had roles above Baugh. eBay just released a statement[0] which alludes to both the Chief Communications Officer and the CEO (!) having been involved. edit: Another article[1] provides more details, including that "an eBay executive told Baugh that he wanted to 'crush' those responsible for the newsletter while another executive told Baugh to 'take her down.'" One of these must be the "inappropriate communications" by the CEO, Devin Wenig, mentioned in eBay's statement. edit 2: Still more details in another[2] article, including quotes from communications between "Executive 1" and "Executive 2." [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebay-inc-issues-statement-regarding-162400706.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ebay-inc-issues-statement-reg... [1] https://natick.wickedlocal.com/news/20200615/6-former-ebay-employees-face-federal-charges-after-extensive-campaign-of-harassment-against-natick-couple https://natick.wickedlocal.com/news/20200615/6-former-ebay-e... [2] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/15/metro/six-former-ebay-employees-charged-federal-cyberstalking-case-targeting-natick-couple/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/15/metro/six-former-ebay...

tsomctl 6y ago
I buy a ton of things off eBay. This is seriously making me not want to do business with them again.
- afandian 6y ago
  Not having read / watched the press brefing my first reaction to this comment was, I admit, a bit eye-rolly. Then I watched it. If that is your reaction, seriously, go and watch it. It really is an extraordinary set of allegations. It's nine minutes long and it just gets weirder and weirder.
  - rideontime 6y ago
    And he's still leaving details out! I can't wait to read the complaint itself.
- thorwasdfasdf 6y ago
  Yup, same here.

rdtwo 6y ago

Anyone know the blog/newsletter that was victim to this? I want to go read their stuff. Clearly it’s good stuff if the company was this threatened

summitsummit 6y ago
also looking for this but haven't found it yet
waterfowl 6y ago
I looked on reddit -- seems like it is https://www.ecommercebytes.com/ https://www.ecommercebytes.com/ and maybe a sub-thing "auctionbytes"

yrral 6y ago

Does anyone know the newsletter/blog posts that caused these employees to retaliate like this? Obviously no matter what they said this behavior is 100% not acceptable under any circumstances; these 6 employees are definitely in psychopath territory. However, I'm curious as to what exactly triggered this kind of retaliation.

crazygringo 6y ago

Not even mentioning that one of those charged used to be a police captain... ...but what the hell is wrong with people that they take their job so seriously that they'd personally harass the people who run a newsletter that's critical of the company they work for? And that six of them would do it together? There are no lives at stake here. Nobody's curing cancer or saving democracy here, where maybe I could at least understand how somebody might take criticism as something immoral that needed to be fought against, even if I deeply disagreed with the method. But I just can't even fathom why these six people even cared enough in the first place about some newsletter criticizing them. Where are their psychological work-life boundaries? Why would they even care? This is just so beyond bizarre. It's like some kind of pathological level of psychological identification with your company. Your job is just a job, folks.

guenthert 6y ago
Well, I'd think for a good share of employees, outside the minimum wage earners, their job might be more than just a job. Even if they just put in the contractually agreed upon time, that'll be a significant part of their life. And it doesn't need co-dependence or the equivalent of Stockholm syndrome or "buyer's remorse" to explain a willingness to associate with the employer. It certainly helps with the workplace ambiance. That doesn't mean they typically are willing to commit a crime or go full-on-psychopath as here.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Of course. You can have healthy emotional involvement with your job while still setting healthy boundaries. That's what maturity is. You ought to take pride on a job well-done, enjoy being part of a team with coworkers, and feel that your company does something positive. An online auction site is a positive thing, one reason among many being that it promotes reuse rather than throwing things out. But to harass someone, to break laws? That's beyond the healthy boundary. That's why boundaries exist. That's gone to unhealthy self-identification with the company. Which is what baffles me so much. When people go from "it's more than a job" to "I'll commit crimes for this company", it's baffling and scary.
6y ago

waterfowl 6y ago

These are the newsletters in question. Looks like a normal niche trade community kind of site. https://www.ecommercebytes.com/about/ https://www.ecommercebytes.com/about/ Imagine being a (literally) mom and pop internet newsletter and having a giant come after you personally w/ lots of malice. Reminds me of nissan computer getting arm twisted by the datsun motor company.

libria 6y ago
(Slightly in jest) I was annoyed that minecraft.com doesn't link to the game. It's some random company... that is actually in the craft of real world mining. I'm surprised Nissan was not able to settle w/ mom and pop. Branding is worth millions. I doubt they were being stingy; were they holding out on principle? Were mom and pop asking for a silly amount? It's also amusing a North American corporation was able to wrest the .amazon domain away from, well, the real Amazonians in Brazil.
- waterfowl 6y ago
  Nissan sued the guy(named nissan) for infringement so I think he got pissed. Notably his small computer shop(bearing his name) predated Nissan operating as Nissan(vs. Datsun) in America. Similar things -- peloton.com is not the smartbike, chopt.com is not the salad place(but a sailboat sales company).
  - Plough_Jogger 6y ago
    Chopt appears to sell primarily commercial powerboats.
  - poyu 6y ago
    Also MikeRoweSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_v._MikeRoweSoft
  - matt-attack 6y ago
    Why wouldn't the inventor of Peloton have just come up w/ a name for which he could obtain a .com domain name?

julianeon 6y ago

Two of the people charged were the former director of safety and security and the former eBay director of global resiliency. This is one of those cases where having a ham sandwich in the position would've been better. But seriously, those officials were supposed to save the company from this: literally their job. They should have been bringing down the banhammer on anyone even considering this destructive crime - not perpetrating it.

perl4ever 6y ago
"literally their job" The first thing I thought of was the recent case where Apple's executive in charge of insider trading rule compliance was indicted for insider trading.

cardfret 6y ago

I used to work at ebay (not in the US). The company has quite tolerant culture in terms of several things which any respectable public should never tolerate[sexual harassment, use of racial slurs, etc...] There were also anonymous complaints which essentially turned into a witch hunt led by the team leads to figure out who complained. Most of my colleagues were super nice and excellent professionally but those 1-2 despicable human beings and the tolerant behaviour made the environment toxic as hell.

calibas 6y ago

There's a whole subculture of the internet obsessed with "gang stalking" and they're usually dismissed as just being paranoid. I wonder if at least a small number of cases are actually occurring, and we should be taking the whole thing more seriously... I mean, the facts in this case are more or less the same as what people describe as "gang stalking".

elliekelly 6y ago
Honestly, if I knew this couple and they tried to tell me even half of what had happened I would have thought they were absolutely bonkers. How do you even make that phone call to police? Knowing you’re going to sound like a crazy person. I can’t even imagine the stress they must have felt because there is no chance detectives believed their story right out of the gate.
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  > How do you even make that phone call to police? One of the incidents was when they caught people breaking into their garage to plant a GPS tracker on their car. This seems like a good inroads to the other charges.

simplicio 6y ago

In the movies, when a multi-billion dollar company seeks to destroy a rival, they hire some sort of intimidating "fixer" played by Liam Nielson who hacks their bank accounts to destroy their finacnes, frames them for crimes they didn't commit and murders their pets. In real life, apparently, a team of six people basically come up with a bunch of ideas that wouldn't be out of place in a prank war between rival college fraternities that's gone a little too far.

nogabebop23 6y ago
sending pornography to thier neighbours with their names on it is one (very small) step above swatting them, IMO. If there's any justice (1) people will do time and (2) they will win a huge civil suit against eBay. At least the latter is likely if not the former...
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  It is still pretty damn bad, sexual harassment and libel but miles away from SWATing. That is essentially attempted murder and a credible attempt to try to inflict permanent mental damage. The fact that the police are so trigger happy and bad at assessing the scene for consistency to be a more reliable and safer option than trying to hire a hitman has long been an obvious sign of police reform being desperately needed for years.
- bityard 6y ago
  I wouldn't call the difference very small... Unsolicited porn is mildly embarrassing at best. SWATting almost always results in _at least_ weeks, months or a lifetime of PTSD thereafter, bodily injuries from the force of being physically restrained even if not resisting, and significant property damage running into the thousands of dollars. If you have any dogs that will try to protect their family, the police do not have protocols for containing them, they simply shoot them. SWAT missions can also end in the deaths of suspects due to over-zealous officers or poor communication in the heat of the moment. I know which one I would take if given the choice.
  - 6y ago

DonHopkins 6y ago

>Popp was eBay’s senior manager of global intelligence, Stockwell was the company’s manager of global intelligence center (GIC), Zea was a contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC, and Gilbert was a senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team. Maybe hiring dirty psycho ex-cops and giving them carte blanch authority is just eBay's approach to "Artificial Intelligence"?

cycomanic 6y ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding job-titles, but how does a 32 y.o. become the senior manager of global intelligence and moreover a 26 y.o. the company’s manager of global intelligence center. I mean the job descriptions sound like their are one level below the directors (also considering the two directors involved). Considering that the 26 y.o. was 25 last year, she would have been out of uni maybe 2 years ago? Is that normal?

sct202 6y ago
Maybe they were hired because they would blindly follow orders.
lesdeuxmagots 6y ago
IC -> manager -> director -> vp 4ish years to promote up, especially the first two level levels. Velocity isn't all that crazy.
- andreilys 6y ago
  Yeah maybe at a small company, but not one the size of eBay.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    Is eBay that undesirable a place to work for now in SV?
    - abawany 6y ago
      I had a (thankfully) short stint there as part of an organizational mess that swept me up a few years ago: it was a very painful experience. Clearcase, old undocumented code that you were not allowed to reformat because it would generate too many diffs, database as a message bus, etc. The day I left was one of my happiest ones that year.
      - londons_explore 6y ago

DonHopkins 6y ago

For what it's worth, at least they gave the eBay vendor who mailed the bloody pig head mask to the victim a great review: "A++++ Great seller and fast shipping! I hope to do business with you again."

cycomanic 6y ago

In some weird way the whole story is a pretty big acclamation for the newsletter though. I mean if you get directors of a multi-billion dollar company going after you personally for what you write.

seemslegit 6y ago

How is this not front-page national news ?

seemslegit 6y ago
Hmm apparently Devin Wenig was the CEO of a Reuters division about a decade ago.
rchaud 6y ago
The story was posted less than 2 hours ago. Local news breaks much earlier than national. National news will eventually pick this up; even in the currently congested news cycle, this story is too bizarre for it not to.
- seemslegit 6y ago
  > Local news breaks much earlier than national. On federal cases involving a multi-billion household name company ? Not to my experience but perhaps.
  - anigbrowl 6y ago
    Give it 24 hours. There's a lot of competition.
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      It's already made the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/ebay-employees-stalking-charges-spiders-cockroaches-pig-mask https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/ebay-empl...
    - rchaud 6y ago
      Here's the NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/technology/ebay-cyberstalking-with-cockroaches-and-bloody-pig-face.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/technology/ebay-cyberstal...
6y ago

glitcher 6y ago

Sounds like the content the couple published about eBay really struck a nerve. I would like to see that content gain more widespread attention as a result, since it may be something worth looking into more closely. Does anyone have original sources of the content? If it was linked in the article I missed it. EDIT: another commentor posted a link to their website, but there are many articles involving eBay. Makes me wonder which ones specifically caused the most friction? https://www.ecommercebytes.com/ https://www.ecommercebytes.com/

CamperBob2 6y ago
Next big challenge for these folks: Slashdot sues them for stealing their .css file, and Geocities piles on with a snarky amicus brief.
mundo 6y ago
I read through a few recent posts (trying to understand how this absolutely bizarre story could've come about) and it seems like the current point of contention is "Managed Payments", which appears to be a euphemism for ebay raising fees later this year. However, the longevity of the newsletter and the viciousness of the harassment make me assume this must be a personal issue.

creaghpatr 6y ago

And here I was thinking Kenton from "Devs" was an unrealistic character. *Devs ep 1 and 2 spoilers in the article https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/devs-kenton-character-episode-2-explained-spoilers-recap https://www.inverse.com/entertainment/devs-kenton-character-...

lvs 6y ago

This is some HBO Silicon Valley level insanity. What the ...

jetrink 6y ago
It reminded me more of Tiger King: a group of people driven by a petty feud to commit increasingly spiteful and illegal actions against a couple who make their lives at work difficult.

mariuolo 6y ago

If these actions were sanctioned from high enough figures in the hierarchy, doesn't it mean they make the company as highly liable? That couple is going to get a fat payout.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

A reminder: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

wyck 6y ago

And yet ebay stock is at a near all time high, with this kind of corporate culture in place? We really live in bizarre times.

ponker 6y ago

I'd bet a paycheck that the CEO was involved. No other way that a group of senior execs could all get on board with what was obviously a moronic idea with a staggeringly bad personal risk/reward ratio. The way this happens is that people who are used to treating CEOs like religious prophets hear an offhand comment from the CEO and go way too fucking far with it.

ycombonator 6y ago

> “The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized 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 from the company,” eBay said. That’s all I had to read. It had to come from the top to be this organized.

ww520 6y ago

The plot is movie material. I bet there's a book deal(s) coming up somewhere.

TrinaryWorksToo 6y ago
There's gonna be a horror movie remake 4 years. Probably.

sarah_jackson 6y ago

What is wrong with people these days?!?

downerending 6y ago

Laws are for other people. It's all the rage these days.

shervinafshar 6y ago

I tried to find an official response from the company to no success through their CS so I asked the community-driven forums. After receiving some pedantic let-me-copy-paste-a-sentence-from-article-you-just-posted, I found the closest thing that I could get to an official response: https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/A-message-from-Jordan-Jordan-Sweetnam-SVP-GM-North-America/ba-p/31012551 https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/A-message-from-J...

notavalleyman 6y ago
Here is the official comment https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-inc-issues-statement-regarding-indictments-of-previously-terminated-employees/ https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-inc-issues-stateme...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

darth_avocado 6y ago

It is ironic they did all that because people talked bad about the company and here we are a couple of years later and people only talk bad about the company.

throwawayLcdQ 6y ago

created this throwaway to say: I worked for a month at eBay and it was an utter shitshow. I came in to replace a guy who built a prototype app without version control, which wrote uploaded files onto the same hard drive that the app ran on. first thing I did is I put the code into git on my local machine. a few days after that, the hard drive had too many files uploaded, and it overwrote the code base. the guy who left set the project up to fail, not realizing he had done so. total unprofessional BS. the only reason the app could be restored at all is because I noticed this rookie mistake and put everything under version control immediately, on my first day. (the guy who left had turned in his work machine and it was probably already wiped.) did they thank me? no. did they at least speak to me in a professional manner? also no. just one data point, of course, but my impression of eBay was that it was totally toxic and not a place where managers needed to know anything at all about what they were doing in order to get ahead.

NullPrefix 6y ago
Were you at least given a stern talk about the wasteful nature of version control software?

wgerard 6y ago

Wild. I'm like 99% positive I know the couple and the newsletter they targeted, because I used to work for an ecommerce company that also came under fire from said couple semi-frequently. Of course, like adults, we just rolled our eyes a little bit when it was particularly over-the-top and tried to use our rational heads to determine whether the criticism was warranted or not. Truthfully, I think they kept us in check and I'm glad they exist. If we had done anything even close to this, we would've been fired immediately. To be even more blunt, I think I would've been fired for interacting with them AT ALL, even just a strongly-worded email. Just a little wild to see how differently people react to the same exact situation.

rkagerer 6y ago

My experience as a buyer and seller on eBay has been going downhill the last few years. Reading this story sickens me, and makes me not want to do business on their platform anymore. I hope they nail the top execs who encouraged the behavior. Even in the unlikely-looking scenario they weren't complicit, they ought to be fired for allowing such an unprofessional culture to fester under their watch.

bdcravens 6y ago
My wife and I have a fledgling reselling business on the side, and Mercari is a far superior experience in every way. It's not as full featured as eBay, but it doesn't necessarily have to be.
- chipperyman573 6y ago
  How is your experience with buyer disputes? That's the biggest issue I hear about on ebay
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    Haven't had many, because they have a stronger policy. The item is tracked, and if it's delivered to the proper address, the only way they can get a refund is either for damage or for not as described. Buyer submits proof to Mercari, and they make the decision.
- rkagerer 6y ago
  How big is the audience compared to eBay?
  - bdcravens 6y ago
    Statistics I've seen say there are about 15M monthly users, but not all are in the US (it started in Japan about 7 years ago). Mercari says it has about 45M downloads in the US. https://www.mercari.com/about/ https://www.mercari.com/about/ eBay has about 10x that number of "active" users https://www.statista.com/statistics/242235/number-of-ebays-total-active-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/242235/number-of-ebays-t...

jxramos 6y ago

Other than speaking poorly about ebay what specifically did the so called Natick couple present as a threat to ebay or to these criminals individually? Anyone have a link to the newsletter that was being published? Should be useful to browse a little of it to see what the threat to ebay was exactly.

hashmal 6y ago

He was responsible for way too many bugs I guess.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seemslegit 6y ago

That's not cyberstalking - that's actual, physical, real-life stalking.

jdright 6y ago

eBay is such a terrible company (in part inherited from PayPal). There is no instance of dealing with then were I had plenty of headaches. I just hate the thinking to have to do anything with these companies again and any service that requires PayPal just lose me as a client on the sight of PayPal logo.

dgellow 6y ago

How much has to go wrong in a company to arrive at a situation like this. That's the craziest company story I ever read. From The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21291666/ebay-employees-arrested-journalist-harassment https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21291666/ebay-employees-a...

beepboopbeep 6y ago

What the hell?

nknealk 6y ago

There are several SEC filings around the departure of the CEO in Sept 2019[1][2] that line up with with the timeline mentioned in this article. Here's the relevant snippet from the 8-K: "On September 24, 2019, the Company and Mr. Wenig entered into a letter agreement regarding his departure (the “Wenig Letter”). Pursuant to the terms of the Wenig Letter, in exchange for his execution and non-revocation of a release of claims against the Company, the Company agreed to provide Mr. Wenig with (1) the payments required to be made to him under his letter agreement with the Company dated September 29, 2014 upon a termination without cause, which letter agreement was originally filed with..." The key bit is that the CEO stepping down triggered a severance agreement for termination without cause. This lines up with the reporting that he engaged in unethical behavior and had to be forced out. [1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519254832/d806459d8k.htm https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/0001... [2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519254832/d806459dex101.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519...

mulmen 6y ago
I’m confused. How is unethical behavior not cause for termination? This reads like doublespeak.
- 0xEFF 6y ago
  They chose to pay his severance instead of disclosing they had an unethical CEO for 5 years.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  Most likely one of two ways: 1. His employment contract specifies what reasons may justify a "termination for cause", and this wasn't listed. (1a. eBay didn't want to have to prove that the conduct here met the definition of a specified "for cause" cause.) 2. eBay could have terminated him for cause, but intentionally terminated him for no cause instead in hopes of avoiding negative publicity.
  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago

dmix 6y ago

Companies building 'intelligence' and external-facing security wings have large potential for abuse and need to be very careful. Just like big private tech companies wading into censorship and politics, you have to have strong values from leadership and a strong internal cultural to prevent any sort of abuse of power. These sorts of things are minefields. One of the most common forms of abuse is when it's used like some personal weapon against pet enemies - merely because executives or employees don't like certain groups or want to silence them. Which seems to be the case here. It's a difficult balance, so if it's going to exist at all they need to invest heavily in making sure they are acting ethically at all times. Either bring the clamps down or get rid of it entirely.

aaron695 6y ago

I'm impressed there seems to be quite a wide range of bloody pig masks to chose from. There are whole other worlds out there. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bloody+pig+mask https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bloody+pig+mask (Also interesting the police have chosen an angle to take the photo of the bloody pig mask and the uncanny valley effect (which is photos are scarier than IRL) to make it look it's worst)

selimthegrim 6y ago
Hotline Miami leftovers?

jb775 6y ago

Pornography mailed to neighbors...bloody pig mask...box delivered w/ live cockroaches....This story is clickbait GOLD

vondur 6y ago

This is absolutely insane. How could people that are capable of acting like this end up as heads of a huge tech company? It's as if they are literally acting like children.

throwawebaydev 6y ago

Ebay third party developer here. The couple in question are the Steiner’s who run the ecommercebytes and auctionbytes blogs. I don’t advocate, at all, what the ebay execs did, but I will say that the steiners are completely vindictive people who use their platform to hurt people they don’t agree with. They are not innocent, and their so called journalism isn’t anything more than hate mongering. Again, I don’t think they should be harassed, but in essence, they get away with harassment everyday. Their blog is full of negativity and people constantly berating ebay employees.

stolen_biscuit 6y ago
Can you link to some of these extremely negative articles on their blogs please?
raincom 6y ago
Please post some instances of their "berating ebay employees".

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ponker 6y ago

As always, the CEO managed to keep himself at arms length and isn’t going to jail even though these suckers might.

greenyoda 6y ago
The CEO could very well be the ultimate target of this investigation, and could end up in prison. In cases like this, the prosecutors frequently offer the lower-level suspects leniency if they cooperate with the prosecution of the high-level suspect. What we're seeing here could just be the beginning of a case that could last for a long time, with evidence against the CEO accumulating at each step. The CEO is probably getting very nervous right now. Maybe his nervousness will make him commit some more crimes, like lying to the FBI or trying to destroy evidence.
- ponker 6y ago
  True, but usually the smart CEOs bosses etc. give instructions coded in a way that can seem vague in a court of law (“We need to do something about Tony”) but are not at all vague to their subordinates. This is why you see Mob bosses frequently get 20 year sentences while their henchmen get life without parole because they can’t be conclusively tied to the murder.

luord 6y ago

Why? Why would anyone do this? What needs to happen for people to harass someone over some words on the internet that didn't harm anyone? Letting people have opinions seems like it would be easy.

sizzle 6y ago

Someone please help me understand how a small 2 person newsletter run out of a home in the suburbs was able to provoke high ranking and educated (one is a Columbia Law School JD) tech executives into seeing absolute red to the point of commiting brazen and shockingly criminal black-ops style missions that seem more reasonably explained by having psychosis or mental illness than taking your job too seriously. Did they simply think they wouldn't get caught, blinded by their privilege and ability to get basically anything they want in life with little consequence given their wealth and status/power ? Strong God complex vibes from the executives and Stockholm Syndrome behaviors from their subordinates. (Read the actual court filing, the WhatsApp convos between the individual are wild...)

TwoNineFive 6y ago

Holy shit this is nuclear. I shy away from hyperbolic statements, but this is front-page news and there will/should be longer-term fallout. This is an example of high-tech corporations using their corporate might to terrorize not just private individuals, but individuals engaged in journalism. The plausible deniability is gone; these were C-suite people and entire departments were involved. NEWS people are going to be all over this at multiple angles: Big-tech uses private data to terrorize, intimidate, and control. When big-tech goes after small-time journalists. Profiles of executives and the fallout for their careers. You can bet there will be a multi-million dollar settlement from eBay. This story has legs.

neilv 6y ago

If the allegations are true, what's surprising to me is how comically incompetent the accused were at being ruthless. I'm glad the victims weren't targeted by a more competent sociopath, or it might've been one step to being neutralized via financial ruin, death in the family, or being framed for some horrible crime.

nullc 6y ago

The strategy by ebay here was less dumb than the article makes it sound. They were harassing the victims while pretending to be disgruntled ebay sellers. Their plan was to step in, as ebay, and help track down and stop the harassment, thereby earning the victims trust and goodwill. They hoped that the goodwill would get the victims to publish less negative stuff about ebay and that it would cause the victim to identify the operator of an anonymous troll account (which they seemed to believe was the victim or at least someone working closely with the victim). I think their goal in learning the identity of the anonymous troll account operator was to take legal action against them. They might have gotten away with it too except the victims got a photograph and an accurate license tag for one of the ebay employee's rental cars.