Whipped Cream Difficulties

I feel like I’m coming to this story a little late. It seems like it just broke today, but I was busy at work all day and only just found out about it.

There is a couple in Natick, Massachusetts that publishes an online e-commerce newsletter. I don’t know the name of the newsletter or where to find it, but some of their articles were critical of eBay.

eBay was not happy with their coverage.

In response, one company executive wrote to another saying the newsletter editor was “out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to text messages included in the complaint. The other executive responded: “Let me ask you this. Do we need to shut her entire site down?”

And so, eBay employees – apparently at the direction of upper management – started harassing the couple. Some of their tactics:

• sending fly larvae and live spiders
• sending a box of live cockroaches
• sending “a bloody pig mask” (picture in article)
• sending “a book of advice on how to survive the death of a spouse”
• sending a funeral wreath
• sending porn to the couple’s neighbors, but making it appear to have come from the couple
• they apparently tried to send a fetal pig, but for some reason that wasn’t delivered
• and, of course, the ever popular “place a Craigslist ad saying they’re swingers, and folks should come over any night after 10 PM if they want sex”

The employees also sent a series of increasingly aggressive direct messages on Twitter, asking the newsletter editor what her problem was with eBay, the complaint said. The court filing said they followed up with threatening messages, culminating with publishing the couple’s home address.
As an excuse to covertly surveil the couple in the home, the complaint said, two employees also registered for a software conference in Boston in August, and, lest they were stopped by the police, went to the couple’s house carrying false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the publishers for threatening eBay executives.

Six “former” employees have been indicted on federal charges. (eBay says they were all fired in September of last year.) I won’t name them here (they are entitled to a presumption of innocence), but their titles were:

• “director of safety and security”
• “director of global resiliency”
• “senior manager of global intelligence”
• “manager of global intelligence center (GIC)”
• a contractor “who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC”
• “senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team”. (This individual was, according to the articles, a former police captain.)

Two unnamed executives are included in the complaint that had roles above [the “director of safety and security”].

I wasn’t following this closely at the time, but eBay’s CEO, Devin Wenig, left the company last year “weeks after the government began investigating“.

“The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband,” the statement said. It added: “However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure” from eBay.

Edited to add 6/16: the main Hacker News thread on this story adds some additional details, including links to the supposed newsletter and to the FBI’s affidavit requesting charges against two of the employees. I have not had a chance to read the affidavit yet.

Also: Lawrence.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2020 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.