Inside the eBay stalking scandal: How a couple became the target of harassment | 60 Minutes

the online auction site eBay launchedthe e-commerce Revolution when it wasfounded more than 20 years ago over thedecades it's drawn in 134 million usersfrom Mom and Pop collectors on the huntfor bargains to small business owners in2022 users sold almost 74 billiondollars worth of goods through eBaybut last month buried in an otherwisedull annual Financial disclosure a noteon page 105 hinted at a scandal insidethe Silicon Valley Giant it refers to aninquiry from the U.S attorney about thestalking and harassment of the editorand publisher of an online newsletter atthe hands of eBay employeestonight we will introduce you to thecouple that was the target of thatstalking they loved ebase so much theystarted a publication to help people whosell stuff on the auction site and thenfound themselves the focus of a terrorcampaignthe story will continue in a momentwe met Ina and David Steiner in NatickMassachusetts acquaint Boston suburbwhere the couple had enjoyed a quietlife until the summer of 2019. youcalled it psychological warfare it feltlike corporate terrorism because we wereterrorizedand it was very calculated it was veryvicious one of the things that we alsolearned was what sadistic pleasure thesepeople took in terrorizing us theSteiners have been married for more than30 years and worked together from theirhome for more than 20. they publish aNews website called e-commerce bitesDavid handles the business side ofthings and Aina does the reporting whatdo you cover who's the audiencewe cover industry news so what I do is II follow what's happening and how itimpacts sellers people would write to usand they would say hey I'm having aproblem with Amazon or I'm having aproblem with eBay so well let's put up asection where where we can just be aconduit that's all we ever wanted to bea conduit for sellers to tell theproblems tell their issues shareinformation and give them a voice andgive them a voice most of their 600 000readers are sellers on eBay Amazon andEtsy but the signers say e-commerceExecutives also read aina's articlesclosely industry observers would contactus with questions as there were certainthings going on and Wall Street was veryinterested because these were publiccompanies and they needed to know tellme what happened when you opened youremail in the morning of August 8th wellwe were getting bombardedum with with signups to Crazynewsletters newsletters the Steinersnever signed up for Sin City fetishnight the satanic temple the Communistparty and dozens of others then somebodystarted harassing us on Twitter throughdirect messages what were you seeing onTwitterit was basically shut up or else and itwas it was as blatant as that but muchmore threatening than that and so vulgarwe can't show you many of the messagesthree days later the Steiners got astrange call somebody left a voicemailfor us saying they couldn't fulfill theorder for a wet specimenas David was the one who called and hesaid what is a wet specimen and and itwas a pig fetus that's when I really myheart sank because I thought who mightbe angry at something I wrote and Icouldn't figure it out I mean we were wewere desperately trying to think whocould it be is that when you called thepoliceevery step along the way that was thefirst one we would uh report it and whenthe police drove up to the front doorwe had to put on you know a rationalFaith so we couldn't show how terrifiedwe were after the police officer tookthe report he he stepped outside andsaid there's a package here so he waitedand when I opened up the package itlooked like it looked like flesh andhair and umkind of yelled or shrieked it was a pigmask from the horror movie Saw the plotinvolves a psychopath who tortures hisvictims the last thing they see is themask I imagine as this is happeningyou're not only thinking who is thisperson but what are they going to donext oh that was the that was thequestion what what are they going to donext over the next week someone sentboxes of live cockroaches and spiders tothe signers pornography was sent totheir neighbors but addressed to Davidon social media the Steiner's home waslisted as the site of yard sales and sexparties and then this book aboutsurviving the loss of a spouse addressedto David arrived at the Steiner'sdoorstep it was a death threat and to befollowed upfew short days later with a funeralwreathan expensive funeral please it it onlyconfirmed that these people were goingto hurt or kill Ainayou were afraid for her life I I wasterrified I was going to lose herpolice at first thought it might be asmall town prank David installed moresecurity cameras at their home but forthree weeks the threats and packageskept coming as this is going on what'sit like to be inside your housewhen it would get dark out at nightthat's when I would really be terrifiedyou guys started sleeping in separaterooms at one point what we what wewanted to do was to make sure that ifsomeone did break inthat at least one of us could eithercall it a police or Escapethe Steiners were afraid inside theirhouse and afraid to leave it after Davidnoticed a van and later a car followinghim he was terrified but managed to geta photo of the license plate that brokeopen the case I'm a guy who likes to digup things I sometimes don't get the endresult and that's why I rely on Smartguys like this Natick detective JohnHaswell was working the case withSergeant Jason Sutherland he ran thelicense plate of the car that had beenfollowing David and it came back to arental agency and I contacted the rentalagency and I got the name of the renterof Veronica Zay I didn't knowanything about the Steiners at thispoint other than what was going on withthem so I this was the first time that Icalled them I said uh are you familiarwith the name they weren't and while Iwas saying that I think um Mrs Steinerdid her own little search and said oh myGod uh she works for eBayI I don't know I can't I can't describehow flabbergasted we wereeBay I I mean what was an eBay employeedoing in a rental van following Daviddid sheum and all these things was it eBay thatdid this to us I mean it wasinconceivableSergeant Sutherland tracked Veronicazay's rental car to the Boston RitzCarlton and called her from the lobbyI fully expected her to come down andsay he hand me a business card and sayI'm from eBay and we're doing aninvestigation and yeah I drove by thehouseum we called up to the room and she saidshe'd be down after she had a conferencecall she never showed up they left townwithout talking to policeHaswell had been chasing down anotherlead he learned the funeral wraith sentto the Steiners was bought with a giftcard from a grocery store in SiliconValley not far from eBay headquartersyeah they were less than eight milesaway and he was able to get photographsof them purchasing the gift cards and itwas Veronica's a again the FBI took overten months later the U.S attorney inMassachusetts Andrew lelling announcedthe indictments of six employees andcontractors from eBay the complaintalleges that the victims were targetedbecause eBay Executives were unhappywith the coverage of eBay on thecouple's website it didn't take us anhour to realize the ramifications of apublic companytrying to destroy a journalist they wereattacking the First Amendmentfreedom of the pressthey wanted to destroy Aina and apublication former Federal prosecutorAndrew lehling says the plan to Targetthe Steiners was hatched at eBay whatwas unique about this case is that youhad relatively Senior Management at aFortune 500 companywho thought it was a good idea to launchwhat can only be described as a campaignof Terrortargeting a middle-aged couple in Natickwhywell the why is actually harder than itseems investigators learned in April of2019 eBay's then CEO Devin wenig shareda link to this post Dinah had writtenabout his annual payeBay's Chief Communications OfficerSteve Weimer wrote back we're going tocrush this lady about a month later whenthe CEO of eBay texted take her downprosecutors say Steve Weimer latertexted eBay security director Jim BaughI want to see ashes as long as it takeswhatever it takes just a few days laterinvestigators say boss set up a meetingwith his security staff at eBay'sCalifornia headquarters posted a map ofNatick on the wall and then dispatched ateam to Boston seven people who workedfor eBay's Safety and Security unitincluding two former cops and a formerNanny all pled guilty to stalking orcyber stalking chargessenior security director Jim Baugh wassentenced to five years in prisonVeronica Zay was sentenced to a year ofHome confinement and probation but todate eBay has not been charged with anycrimes the company said in a statementto 60 Minutes the conduct of the formeremployees was wrong and it hascooperated fully with a governmentinvestigation the plan was hatched ineBay's headquarters in a conference roomit was paid for ultimately by eBay don'tthey bear any responsibility for thisthey may but cases are common wherean employee inside a company usescompany resources to do wrong in everyone of those cases is not necessarilytrue that the company itself isresponsible and loveling says there wasnot enough evidence to file criminalcharges against eBay's top ExecutivesDevin wenig or Steve Weimer but when hesays or texts I want to see asheswhatever it takespeople say things like that all the timeespecially senior people in companiesit's not the same as I am knowinglyjoining a criminal conspiracy tocyberstalk a couple in Natick people useloose talk like that all the time let meask you somethingif you have a dog that is trained toattackand then you give them the command takeher downaren't you as responsible for the damagethat happensit's obvious that it started from thetop jalise McDonough and rosemaryscuppiccio are representing the Steinersin a civil case against eBay and hisformer Executives if you're in thec-suite it's your job to know what youremployees are doing how did sit back andsay you didn't know it's especially whengood things were happening and and youknow the share prices were increasingthey were all you know pattingthemselves on the back that we did thatwe did that we had but then whensomething like this happens they turnaround and say we had no idea we had noidea this was happening we've seen thesetext messages from one egg and fromWeimer I was under the impression theyturned over all their text messages thatdidn't happen no uh Weimer deleted histext messages there was a notice thatwent out to everyone to say there's thiscriminal investigation preserve theevidence Weimer immediately deleteseverythingum that's obstruction of justice if Idid that I'd be sitting in a jail cellsomewhere right now the current U.Sattorney has said the investigation intoeBay is ongoingSteve Weimer was fired for cause by eBayand now runs the Boys and Girls Clubs ofSilicon Valley he has said his textswere mischaracterized and that helearned of the employee's conduct onlyafter the fact the former CEO Devinwenig said in a statement to 60 Minutesthat he was appalled at what happenedand had he been aware of it at the timehe would have stopped itwenig resigned from eBay in September of2019 with the 57 million dollar exitpackage