Couple harassed by former eBay employees sue company and former executives

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A Massachusetts couple subjected to threats, mailed packages and other bizarre harassment from former eBay employees filed a lawsuit against the company, its former employees and former CEO Devin Wenig on Wednesday .

David and Ina Steiner, who run the EcommerceBytes website, say in their trial filed in a federal court in Boston that the company engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate them, threaten to kill them, torture them, terrorize them, track them down and silence them” in order “to stifle their reporting on eBay”.

Residents of Natick say they have been the victims of cyberstalking, death threats, bizarre deliveries and in-person surveillance by company employees. They are asking for damages to be awarded by a jury.

“It has been an incredibly difficult ordeal for my wife and I,” said David Steiner in a declaration Wednesday. “We never imagined that doing our job as journalists would lead to this. We want to protect the rights of journalists and their freedom of the press. We have suffered enormous cruelty and abuse and feared for our lives. behavior can happen to us, It can happen to anyone. “

EBay spokespersons did not respond to an email seeking comment from The Associated Press.


6 former Ebay employees accused of cyberstalking …

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According to federal prosecutors, eBay executives were unhappy with the company’s negative coverage on the EcommerceBytes website and were convinced that some anonymous commenters on the blog were in collusion with the Steiner. Executives texted each other about the need to “shoot her” and “burn her to the ground”.

The harassment campaign included anonymous deliveries of live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig-faced Halloween mask at the couple’s home, according to federal prosecutors. Employees also sent pornographic magazines bearing the husband’s name to a neighbor’s house and planned to break into the couple’s garage to install a GPS device on their car.

Thanks to these actions, the Steiner “experience[d] debilitating fear, were unable to sleep and lived in terror of being killed, ”their trial alleges.

Several former eBay employees have been billed last June for their role in the harassment campaign. At least five already have pleaded guilty.

“It was a determined and systematic effort by senior executives of a large corporation to destroy a couple’s life in Natick, simply because they were posting content that the executives of the company didn’t like it, “then Massachusetts lawyer Andrew Lelling said at the time.

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