At 4 PM on August 10, 2019, Ina and David Steiner received an unexpected package

Inside was a bloody pig mask

Moments later, they received a Twitter message: “DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????”

When eBay launched 24 years prior, the Steiners were fascinated by the website and its potential to revolutionize the resale industry, in which they actively participated

In 1999, they launched a website to provide advice to resellers and track trends among resale companies

EcommerceBytes became necessary reading among professional resellers

By 2019, it counted hundreds of thousands of readers and had caught eBay’s attention

That January, Elliott Management, an aggressive hedge fund, took a large stake in eBay, which had been struggling and ceding ground to Amazon

Elliot demanded it make changes to become more profitable, putting pressure on its executives

In that environment, the Steiners reported critically on eBay

One April 2019 article revealed that the company’s CEO was being paid 152 times more than the average eBay employee

eBay’s CEO forwarded that story to the company’s chief communications officer (CCO), who wrote that eBay was "going to crush this lady."

“Take her down,” the CEO wrote soon after

The CCO later texted eBay’s security director that Ms. Steiner “needs to be BURNED DOWN"

Do “whatever it takes,” he said soon after

The final straw was a story Ms. Steiner wrote about a lawsuit in which eBay accused Amazon of poaching its sellers

eBay’s CEO wrote, “If you are ever going to take her down…now is the time”

On August 7, an eBay employee began messaging Ms. Steiner with a fake Twitter account

With a skull profile picture, she wrote increasingly angry emails until finally writing, “I guess im goin to have to get ur attention another way bitch…”

Three days later, the pig mask arrived

“DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????” a follow-up Twitter message asked

Threatening boxes continued to arrive

They contained fly larvae, cockroaches, and live spiders; another had a book about “Surviving the Loss of a Spouse”

Ads on Craigslist announced swingers parties and estate sales at the Steiners’ home, while the Steiners continued to receive unsolicited food deliveries for which they had to pay

The Steiners’ neighbors received a porn magazine addressed to Mr. Steiner

The threats soon turned into stalking when two eBay employees flew to Massachusetts

They went to the Steiners’ home to install a GPS tracking device on their vehicle, although that attempt failed. They separately bought a crowbar with the apparent intent of breaking into the Steiners’ home

They tailed the Steiners’ cars and repeatedly drove past their home

The Steiners notified the police, who placed an undercover car outside their home

One day, the officer spotted a strange vehicle driving past

The police traced the car to an eBay employee and then found that some pizzas had been bought with a credit card registered near eBay’s headquarters

When it became clear the police were onto them, the eBay pair fled back to California where the company attempted a cover-up

Within a month, eBay’s lawyers had suspended some staff and the CEO had resigned, although without mentioning the incident and taking a $57M exit package

The company’s CCO subsequently became the chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley, which said it was “aware” of the scandal but considered him “a leader with integrity”

In summer 2020, the US Justice Department brought stalking and other charges against seven former eBay staff

eBay’s Senior Director of Safety & Security received a 57-month prison sentence; the Director of Global Resiliency received a 24-month sentence; and five others pleaded guilty and received lesser sentences

Neither the CEO nor CCO faced charges

This month, the Justice Department fined eBay $3M over the scandal

The prosecutor said that “eBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct”

“The company’s employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand”

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