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The Courts Crime The Almighty Buck

eBay To Pay $3 Million Penalty For Employees Sending Live Cockroaches, Fetal Pig To Bloggers (cbsnews.com) 43

Posted by BeauHD from the online-intimidation-campaigns dept.
E-commerce giant eBay agreed to pay a $3 million penalty for the harassment and stalking of a Massachusetts couple by several of its employees. "The couple, Ina and David Steiner, had been subjected to threats and bizarre deliveries, including live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask in August 2019," reports CBS News. From the report: Thursday's fine comes after several eBay employees ran a harassment and intimidation campaign against the Steiners, who publish a news website focusing on players in the e-commerce industry. "eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company's employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand," Levy said. "We left no stone unturned in our mission to hold accountable every individual who turned the victims' world upside-down through a never-ending nightmare of menacing and criminal acts."

The Justice Department criminally charged eBay with two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through electronic communications services, one count of witness tampering and one count of obstruction of justice. The company agreed to pay $3 million as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. Under the agreement, eBay will be required to retain an independent corporate compliance monitor for three years, officials said, to "ensure that eBay's senior leadership sets a tone that makes compliance with the law paramount, implements safeguards to prevent future criminal activity, and makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated," Levy said.

Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said the plan to target the Steiners, which he described as a "campaign of terror," was hatched in April 2019 at eBay. Devin Wenig, eBay's CEO at the time, shared a link to a post Ina Steiner had written about his annual pay. The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady." About a month later, Wenig texted: "Take her down." Prosecutors said Wymer later texted eBay security director Jim Baugh. "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes," Wymer wrote. Investigators said Baugh set up a meeting with security staff and dispatched a team to Boston, about 20 miles from where the Steiners live. "Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content, and with the comments posted beneath the newsletter's articles," the Department of Justice wrote in its Thursday announcement. Two former eBay security executives were sentenced to prison over the incident.
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eBay To Pay $3 Million Penalty For Employees Sending Live Cockroaches, Fetal Pig To Bloggers More

eBay To Pay $3 Million Penalty For Employees Sending Live Cockroaches, Fetal Pig To Bloggers

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  • 3 Million (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RegistrationIsDumb83 ( 6517138 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @10:13PM (#64151649)
    So that's what, 15 minutes of revenue on eBay? These penalties need to be based on the size of the business so they're actually a deterrent. Especially given the original scheme was to silence criticism of eBay, it'd be easy for them to just look at it as a cost of doing business.
    • Agreed. This penalty doesn't even amount to a rounding error on a quarterly earnings statement

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by christoban ( 3028573 )

      What if it was only those two "underlings" who were at all involved in it?

      Should you literally go jail because some of your underlings did some really stupid stuff like that?

      Why is it that some people are so damned quick to demand that people be "sent to jail!" for any and every little thing they find offensive? They send them a few slightly disturbing things in the mail, and the people involved are likely already in jail. How is that not enough?

      • Re:3 Million (Score:5, Informative)

        by christoban ( 3028573 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:31PM (#64151785)

        Ok, now I've read the article fully YES WENIG SHOULD BE IN JAIL TOO.

        Please don't hurt me...

        • Re:3 Million (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:15AM (#64152015)

          The company's chief communications officer, Steve Wymer, responded: "We are going to crush this lady." About a month later, Wenig texted: "Take her down." Prosecutors said Wymer later texted eBay security director Jim Baugh. "I want to see ashes. As long as it takes. Whatever it takes,"

          Not just Wenig - Wymer also needs to go down. Jim Baugh was sentenced to 57 months over his part in this debacle, someone called David Harville got 24 months.

    • Re:3 Million (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Col. Klink (retired) ( 11632 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:59PM (#64151839)

      "...makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated."

      I want the contract to build their corporate training module on "not terrorizing innocent people".

      "The Daily Express" wrote an article criticizing your unethical business practices. Choose all of the appropriate responses:

      ___ Send them live spiders
      ___ Send them cockroaches
      ___ Send them a letter stating your point of view
      ___ Send them a funeral wreath stating your point of view
      ___ Investigate the claims and take internal action to address them
      ___ Send them a bloody pig mask

    • The real problem with ebay is that it is america's biggest stolen good fencing operation

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sabri ( 584428 )
      Let's do the math. Their revenue over 2020 was 10.27 billion USD (their 2022 was actually lower). That's 28,136,986 per day, or $1,172,374 per hour, so $293,093 every 15 minutes. Also, that's $325 every second.

      Now, given that eBay's "take rate", meaning the money they make on transactions, is roughly 11%, that means that they handle over $3,300 in transactions per second.

      They can pay a small fine of $3M.

  • People need to go to jail for this. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by h0m3rs1mps0n ( 6457364 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @10:19PM (#64151657)
    Not just the underlings. This is a criminal conspiracy and it should reach the top of the company.

  • More victims? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ericspinder ( 146776 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @10:31PM (#64151679) Journal
    Who'd a thunk that e-Bay was a rotting cesspool of gangland activity and pressure campaigns. They had a team, this couldn't have been a 'one-off' thing, clearly there were other victims; I doubt if they killed anyone (directly), but I'm sure they ruined a few people along the way.

  • ensure that eBay's senior leadership sets a tone that makes compliance with the law paramount, implements safeguards to prevent future criminal activity, and makes clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations will not be tolerated,

    More like senior leadership sets a deaf air to criminal behavior, implements no safeguards for future criminal activity and continue doing criminal activity as the cost of doing business, and makes it clear to every eBay employee that the idea of terrorizing innocent people and obstructing investigations is perfectly fine and shall result in such at most a small fine.

  • And.... Wenig the CEO is not in prison for this (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:01PM (#64151731)

    They were acting at his orders. Not sending him to prison is on the same level as letting a mafia leader off because he told his made men "just go deal with that guy for me" but "didn't specify how."

    Even if he was horrified by their specific methods and didn't condone it, he sicced those guys on them. No different than a dog owner who doesn't understand how dangerous their dog is and sics the dog on someone for illegal reasons.

  • Imagine a billionaire doing this and only being fined for it. Never mind, that happens too.

  • $57 Million exit package! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blahbooboo ( 839709 ) on Thursday January 11, 2024 @11:51PM (#64151819)
    eBay CEO Wenig given $57 million in his eBay exit package. Sounds like justice was not done...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by udin ( 30514 )
      Perhaps the inevitable civil suit will include Wenig specifically, and a number like $57 million sounds about right for his contribution.
  • Wenig sounds like the character from Silicon Valley, Gavin Belson, was at least partly based on him. If he weren't rich & powerful, he'd be sitting in jail right now. Instead, he makes his minions fall on their swords & he'll probably collect a bonus in excess of $3 million after this. I'm surprised eBay's lawyers didn't argue that this was free speech, protected under the first amendment.
  • those items in their employee training: "don't send cockroaches to people"
  • I've seen numerous articles about how the assholes got thrown in jail and this article talks about how eBay pays fine. What about the victim? Aren't they supposed to be compensated for the terror they've endured for such a long time? I imagine it should be around 100M.

  • For 3 million please feel free to send me bugs

  • So the employees who actually did this are facing jailtime right?

  • 3 million, because some morons send some not so nice stuff. Wow, another couple not having to work for the rest of their lives. But you can expect that from bloggers.

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