Seven years after eBay security personnel harassed a pair of Massachusetts journalists in an effort to get them to shut up, the Silicon Valley company and three former executives agreed to pay $56 million to settle their claims.
The couple, David and Ina Steiner, announced the terms on their website Monday night. On Tuesday, eBay released a statement acknowledging a deal. An eBay spokesman did not challenge the Steiners’ accounting.
“The 2019 conduct is not representative of eBay’s culture or thousands of employees around the world today,” the company said.
In an unusual move, the settlement terms were not shrouded in secrecy. The Steiners said that they would receive $46.15 million from eBay and that the company would give an additional $6 million “in charitable contributions to various nonprofit organizations.”
The former eBay chief executive Devin Wenig and two other former colleagues will pay the couple a total of $2.55 million. Mr. Wenig will also pay $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in the name of Ina Steiner, the announcement said.
Mr. Wenig said in a statement that the harassment was “done in secret and without my knowledge.” He added that he was pleased “a meaningful portion of my settlement” would go to protecting freedom of the press. Lawyers for eBay and the other former executives did not respond to messages requesting comment.
In a brief telephone interview, the Steiners said the case was never just about money. One of their goals was to raise an alarm. Executives have tremendous power, they said, but are typically shielded from any fallout.
“Corporations have armies of security people and they can be weaponized,” said Ina Steiner, who does the writing on the couple’s website, EcommerceBytes. They have been advocates for e-commerce sellers on eBay and other sites since the late 1990s dot-com boom.
In the spring of 2019, eBay was under pressure from an activist hedge fund. A handful of Ina Steiner’s articles, including one about a bar Mr. Wenig had built on eBay’s campus, infuriated company executives, according to texts revealed by prosecutors. Further details of the stalking operation were later revealed by journalists and the Steiners’ own lawsuit, which was filed in 2021.
“Take her down,” Mr. Wenig told his communications chief, who in turn told the security team leader to do “whatever it takes.”
The Steiners were bombarded with anonymous material including deliveries of live cockroaches and a bloody pig mask. They were threatened online. Much of the material they were sent, including a funeral wreath and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, suggested imminent death. The security team was on the verge of breaking into the Steiners’ garage to put a tracker on their car when the plot was derailed.
In 2020, Andrew Lelling, who was then the United States attorney for Massachusetts, called it “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.”
He and other prosecutors charged seven members of the security team, who all pleaded guilty. Several served time in prison. But the Steiners were frustrated that no executives were charged, even though, the couple said, they set the campaign in motion.
In 2024, the Justice Department charged eBay with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice. The charges were dropped under a deferred prosecution agreement. The company paid a $3 million fine to the government.
A recent documentary, “Whatever It Takes,” showcases the Steiners’ efforts. The settlement does not provide the drama of a trial, the couple said, but they pronounced themselves generally satisfied.
“We wanted to find the truth,” Ina Steiner said. “As victims you need to know, Why did this happen to me? And we wanted it to be a deterrent — to have corporate executives think twice before they said words and set things in motion.”
In an odd twist, the total settlement amount is almost equal to what Mr. Wenig received in compensation when he left eBay in 2019: $57 million. That was after the plot unraveled but before prosecutors made it public.
As part of the deal, the Steiners said eBay would issue “a strongly worded public statement” about the role of the executives. Asked about this, an eBay spokesman pointed to the company’s statement, which said it acknowledged “the unprofessional tone in internal communications demonstrated, to different degrees and number, by Mr. Wenig, Mr. Wymer and Ms. Jones.”
The parties reached an initial settlement last winter, right before the case was scheduled to go to trial. That deal fell apart, and a new trial was scheduled for January 2027. The Steiners filed a notice with the court Monday asking for their suit to be withdrawn “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled.
The post Couple Stalked by eBay Settle for $56 Million appeared first on New York Times.
