eBay to pay $50 million in bizarre harassment case involving live cockroach deliveries
eBay agrees to $50M settlement over bizarre harassment campaign (Photo illustration by Cheng Xin/Getty Images)
eBay has agreed to pay nearly $50 million in a bizarre harassment case involving former employees who targeted the founders of an e-commerce newsletter with live cockroaches, a bloody pig Halloween mask and other disturbing deliveries.
eBay reached a settlement with the Massachusetts couple just before the case headed to trial.
eBay harassment settlement
By the numbers:
Under the settlement, David and Ina Steiner will receive $48.7 million in compensation, including $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former CEO Devin Wenig, $500,000 from former Senior Vice President Wendy Jones and $50,000 from former Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer.
The company will fund $6 million in charitable contributions to various nonprofit organizations, with Wenig contributing an additional $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in Ina Steiner’s name.
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There’s no confidentiality clause in the agreement.
What they're saying:
"David and I were on the same page that this settlement should and must be made public — as victims who want to prevent something like this from ever happening to anyone else, and as reporters who believe in transparency," Ina Steiner said Tuesday in an email response to questions from The Associated Press. "We hope that this case will serve as a deterrent."
The other side:
When the lawsuit was filed in 2021, the company said "the misconduct of these former employees was wrong," and that it would "do what is fair and appropriate to try to address what the Steiners went through."
On Tuesday, eBay released the following statement, while also condemning the unprofessional tone in internal communications" by former CEO Devin Wenig and other eBay executives.
"What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened."
The company said the conduct "is not representative of eBay’s culture" and said it has since changed leadership and strengthened its policies, procedures and ethics training.
‘Conspiracy to intimidate’
The backstory:
Seven former eBay employees were charged in 2020 with carrying out a coordinated harassment campaign against the Steiners in response to coverage in the couple’s online newsletter. Most of the defendants pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy and cyberstalking and were later sentenced to prison terms or home confinement.
In 2024, eBay Inc. agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty under a deferred prosecution agreement with federal authorities.
The settlement puts an end to more than six years of criminal and civil proceedings. In a 2021 lawsuit filed in Boston federal court, the Steiners accused eBay of a conspiracy to "intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them" in order to "stifle their reporting on eBay."
The Steiners said they were subjected to cyberstalking, death threats and in-person stalking by former eBay workers.
Ina Steiner said the campaign began with threatening direct messages on social media before escalating into anonymous deliveries of live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, a bloody pig Halloween mask and a book about surviving the death of a spouse. The employees also sent pornographic magazines with David Steiner’s name to a neighbor’s home and planned to install a GPS device on the couple’s car.
She said she did not initially know who was behind it or why.
"I could not conceive that a company I had been covering for the past two decades had tried to terrorize us into stopping our reporting," she said.
Ina Steiner said she and her husband hoped that "some good will come out of this painful, life-changing experience."
The Source: This report includes information from The Associated Press.