Two former top eBay executives were charged for cyberstalking and terrorizing a couple critical of the website.
James Baugh, eBay’s former senior director of safety and security, received nearly five years in prison, while eBay’s former director of global resiliency, David Harville, received two, according to CNBC. The two were heavily involved in a scheme to intimidate a couple behind the e-commerce website eCommercebytes, seen as critical of eBay, prosecutors said. Aside from harassing the couple with Twitter messages, the two attempted to break into their house to install a tracking device on their car and sent them threatening deliveries, according to prosecutors. A book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath, a box of live spiders, and cockroaches were just some of the bizarre items mailed to the couple, according to the Guardian.
EBAY OPENS 31,000-FOOT VAULT FOR VALUABLE TRADING CARDS
“The defendants’ toxic brand of online and real-world harassment, threats, and stalking was outrageous, cruel and defies any explanation — all the more because these men were seasoned and highly paid security executives backed by the resources of a Fortune 500 corporation,” U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement obtained by the outlet. “Their behavior was reprehensible.”
The harassment campaign started in 2019 when eCommercebytes published an article critical of a lawsuit filed by eBay against Amazon, which accused the latter of “poaching” the former’s sellers, prosecutors said. EBay’s former CEO, David Wenig, almost immediately emailed another top executive in the company, writing, “If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” referencing Ina Steiner, eCommercebytes’s co-founder and editor, according to court documents seen by the Guardian. The top executive forwarded the message to Baugh, calling the journalist a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.”
Wenig’s role in the scheme remains unclear, and though he avoided criminal prosecution, the couple has filed a civil lawsuit against him. Baugh’s lawyers sought to implicate the former CEO, claiming that Baugh was pressured into undertaking the harassment campaign.
“At this point, an independent investigation has said that Mr Wenig had no knowledge and the prosecutors in the case have made it clear that Baugh was responsible. Devin never told anyone to do anything unethical or illegal and if he had known about it, he would have stopped it,” a spokesperson for Wenig said in an email to the Guardian.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Baugh and Harville personally apologized to the couple before being sentenced, asking for forgiveness and accepting “100% responsibility.”
