eBay and three executives have agreed to pay two Massachusetts journalists $56 million to settle a stalking case, reports David Streitfeld of The New York Times.
Streitfeld reports, “In the spring of 2019, eBay was under pressure from an activist hedge fund. A handful of Ms. 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 U.S. 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.'”
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