The two former eBay executives were sentenced to prison yesterday for cyberstalking and harassing journalists. One ex-eBay employee was sentenced last year.
The former senior director of safety and security at eBay, James Baugh, was sentenced to 57 months in prison and two years of supervised release. David Harville was sentenced to two years in prison and two years of supervised release. Both Baugh and Harville were fined tens of thousands of dollars.
The charges were announced in June 2020. Ina and David Steiner are the owners of the website EcommerceBytes.
The Justice Department said yesterday that the harassment campaign sent "anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims' home," including a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, and a fetal pig. "Craigslist posts invite members of the public to experience sexual encounters at the victims' home."
The Justice Department said there were threats written as if they had been sent by eBay sellers who were unhappy with the victims' coverage in the newsletter.
According to the Justice Department, Baugh, Harville and a co-conspirator traveled from California to Natick to surveil the victims and install a gps tracker on their car. The victims called the police after seeing the team. Harville bought tools that he intended to break into the victims' garage and lied to an eBay investigator who was responding to the police request for assistance.
The Justice Department said that Baugh and Harville deleted digital evidence after learning of the police investigation.
AdvertisementBaugh and Harville showed a clear contempt for the law when they weaponized eBay's security department to engage in an incredibly disturbing pattern of harassment and intimidation to torment this couple.
The harassment campaign ended in September. The newsletter's tone and content as well as the substance of comments posted beneath the newsletter's articles annoyed senior executives at eBay. The Justice Department said that the harassment campaign came from communications between the senior executives and Baugh, who was eBay's senior security employee.
The case was discussed in a message written by Ina. She wrote that she and David would be going to the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston tomorrow to tell a judge how they were affected by two men who admitted to cyberstalking and surveilling them. We will be going to Boston at least two more times this fall to tell a judge how four other defendants ruined our lives.
She wrote that the Steiners were spared the trial but also deprived of the information that would have come out during it. After settlement talks failed, the Steiners decided to go ahead with their lawsuit against eBay.
Everyone who plays a role should be held accountable. We brought a civil RICO case against the people we believe were responsible for the criminal campaign, including the former eBay CEO, Steve Wymer. It was a difficult decision, but we think it was the right one. We have a lot of unanswered questions that could help us heal and regain some trust.
The criminal and civil cases are heard in the District of Massachusetts.
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