June 24, 2020

"The box of live cockroaches delivered to their door was the last straw for David and Ina Steiner. For more than two decades..."

"... the professional collectors ran a niche e-commerce blog out of their home in the Boston suburbs, with a focus on Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. Then, last August, the couple started receiving threatening emails and tweets. Not long after, according to federal investigators, a package arrived with a mask of a bloody pig’s head. Next, they received a funeral wreath. Neighbors were sent pornographic videos addressed to one of the Steiners. Strange cars seemed to follow them around... [T]he local police tracked the license plate to a rental car checked out to a Veronica Zea, staying at Boston’s Ritz-Carlton hotel along with a man named David Harville, according to an affidavit from a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent working the case.... Both Ms. Zea and Mr. Harville worked for eBay, the $34 billion online marketplace based more than 3,000 miles away in San Jose, Calif. The once dominant site was a frequent target of the Steiners’ blog posts on their site, called ECommerceBytes.... Last Monday, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts said it charged six former eBay executives and employees, all part of its security team, with taking part in a weekslong harassment campaign that included threatening emails and tweets, fake Craigslist posts and the mysterious deliveries. Now the U.S. attorney’s office is investigating whether eBay targeted any other critics with harassment campaigns, according to a person familiar with the investigation...."

From "‘Crush This Lady.’ Inside eBay’s Bizarre Campaign Against a Blog Critic/Security employees allegedly orchestrated deliveries of live cockroaches, pornographic videos and a mask of a bloody pig’s head" (Wall Street Journal, where I did not encounter a paywall).

13 comments:

Wince said...

"...employees allegedly orchestrated deliveries of live cockroaches, pornographic videos and a mask of a bloody pig’s head".

So, that's what happened to my Amazon Prime order.

RMc said...

Wall Street Journal, where I did not encounter a paywall

Well, I did! Check your privilege, professor...!

Michael K said...

I had my eBay account hacked two weeks ago and a $900 iPhone ordered. I learned this when I got my credit card bill. eBay was no help but the credit card cancelled the charge. The seller will probably get screwed but that is his problem.

Tomcc said...

You have to be morally corrupt to think that this is a good way to address a problem in your business. And somehow, they had six people involved...from the security team?

Psota said...

Amazing story and further proof that some parts of American society have become desperate and insane.

Leland said...

I've used eBay, but only when I've completely exhausted other ways to purchase something.

Psota said...

They were from "security" the same way Jeffrey Epstein was connected to "intelligence."

There is some kind of darkness in the background right now.

buwaya said...

I've used ebay regularly for 20 years, for over a thousand transactions, very few of which were a problem, and that had to do with the buyers in a couple of cases. I was mainly trading photography collectibles.

There are some things, such as many collectors items, where it is still the standard market, where prices are set.

This case is insane and it suggests very poor management, probably obsessed with cost-cutting, which further suggests their business is shrinking.

Big Mike said...

Wall Street Journal threw up a paywall for me. Sigh.

Skeptical Voter said...

Well if you get past the paywall and into the WSJ (not a problem for me since I've taken the print edition for many, many years) you'll see the story is even more interesting. There's a real taint of something like E Bay's CEO saying "Who will rid me of these troublesome commenters".

E-Bay (and presumably its CEO) are under pressure from outside investors not happy with the direction E-Bay is taking. E Bay and Pay Pal used to be part of the same corporation. The two were split into two separate entities circa 2014. Since then Pay Pal has prospered and E Bay, relatively speaking, hasn't done well. Hence the pressure from outside investors.

The Steiners had posted messages criticzing the compensation of the E Bay CEO--who after all made "only" 152 times as much as the average E Bay employee. And the charging prosecutor said that the responsibility for these actions goes far up the corporate chain.

I've done several hundred transactions on E Bay both as a buyer and a seller in the last dozen or more years. It's a useful marketplace but there's no reason to believe that E Bay as a company is Mother Theresa.

Ann Althouse said...

Try googling the text to go in. Or find the link on Drudge.

rehajm said...

Amazing story and further proof that some parts of American society have become desperate and insane.

I think it's more a result of a nation of laws but not a nation of universal enforcement of them.

Mary Beth said...

The whole thing is creepy and weird. They had a plan to have the employee who is a former police captain reach out to the couple to offer to "help" in order to generate good will. This is not how sane people behave.

They also signed up for a conference near where the couple lives in order to go to their home with the intent of putting a GPS tracker on their vehicle. Why? I can't think of why this would be helpful except to feed their obsession.