Posted on 06/15/2020 6:32:46 PM PDT by proxy_user
BOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Six eBay employees mounted a cyberstalking campaign — including sending boxes of live cockroaches and a Halloween mask of a bloody pig’s face — against a couple who ran an online e-commerce newsletter, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors on Monday.
Unhappy with the newsletter’s coverage of eBay, the employees, none of whom now work at the company, barraged the couple with threatening emails and sent disturbing deliveries, including a funeral wreath and a book on how to survive the death of a spouse, said Andrew E. Lelling, the United States attorney for Massachusetts, in a news conference on Monday. Several of the employees drove to the couple’s home to spy on them, he said.
“They were not merely unhappy, they were enraged,” Mr. Lelling said, describing how one former eBay executive told a fellow executive in a text message that he wanted to “crush” the woman in the couple, who live in Natick, Mass., a Boston suburb. The result, Mr. Lelling said, “was a systematic campaign, fueled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company, to emotionally and psychologically terrorize this middle-aged couple in Natick with the goal of deterring them from writing bad things online about eBay.”
Prosecutors charged the six people with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Among them, two former eBay officers — James Baugh, the company’s former senior director of safety and security, and David Harville, the company’s former director of global resiliency — were arrested on Monday morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The lawsuits and reputation damage are going to be unbelievable. I expect the stock to plummet in tomorrow's trading.
Evidently, there's some substance to my theory that the last remaining adult in the US died in the middle of the G. W. Bush administration.
Didn’t you ever watch “The Godfather”? These guys are going to take the fall for the greater good of the organization.
They may even have been given a choice by the company:
Your family will be taken care of , or your family WILL be takend care of.
No long term damage to ‘big tech’.
What is a director of ‘global resiliency’?
Boxes of live democrats!!!? Shudder!!
This will send a message to executives including the top.
To obey the law.
Or go to jail.
Maybe they can go work for the FBI or IRS.
From inside an article by Wired . . . Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig also left the company that month. While he isn’t named in the criminal complaint, eBay confirmed that he is “Executive 1” who allegedly gave the initial order to “Take her down” (which was then relayed to Baugh by “Executive 2”).
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Wow. Sounds like he was ordering a hit. What a lunatic.
Speaking of roaches, I remember from years back someone had advertised to buy millions of live roaches.
Seems he was moving out of an apartment and he wanted to leave the place in the same condition that it was in when he moved in.
Meanwhile, all new hires must go through coporate mandated online ethics and conflict of interest training.
Ka-CHING for these people. And this was the work of higher level management, not flunkies, so I think they will get 10x eBay bux to spend anywhere, minus the lawyers’ 30% cut.
And on top of that, eBay will get very, very bad feedback.
This will send a message to always aim for deniability and get underlings to do the dirty work.
No, top execs don’t take the fall. That’s a job for folks further down the food chain. Worst thing likely to happen to the top dogs is a platinum parachute.
So why do these articles never give the name of the newsletter so we can see what it said about eBay?
> The lawsuits and reputation damage are going to be unbelievable.
Yep, people in these kind of positions can actually be that dumb. They may be highly skilled, but they can be pretty dumb on some things.
“Maybe they can go work for the FBI or IRS.”
______
It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s where they came from.
they also deleted emails in an attempt to hide what they did. i am sure they found some of those emails backed up somewhere.
I'm not minimizing the experience they went through, but it was handled with all the expertise that a mid level eBay executive is expected to have. It wasn't that tough of an investigation.
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