127. The White Knight (eBay)

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Another party says they spotted someone with a gun.

Suspect came from the back patio.

Address is 901 Cherry Avenue.

Cross of Fay Hill off of 380.

Again, we have a report of

subject with a gun.

They heard seven to eight shots being fired.

This will be from the YouTube building.

At approximately 12:43 p.m.

on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018, an unidentified woman on foot entered a parking garage at YouTube's San Bruno campus and walked directly to a pedestrian door that led to a courtyard.

where several of the company's 1,700 employees were eating lunch outside.

She was immediately approached by one of those employees who asked to see her corporate ID badge.

Instead, the woman reached into her purse and presented a 9mm handgun and started firing into the crowd indiscriminately as people fled for their lives.

The shooter reloaded and walked east toward the entrance of the main building.

She shot through the glass front doors before pushing the barrel into her own chest.

She pulled the trigger, sending a bullet straight through her heart.

There are reports of an active shooter.

You are looking live at the YouTube building.

This is in San Bruno, California.

That is just south of San Francisco.

San Bruno police arrived within minutes to a chaotic scene.

YouTube employees were running away from the danger.

Others barricaded themselves in their offices.

Someone, in a gesture of good faith, pulled the fire alarm, making communication difficult for everybody.

Law enforcement swept the area and found a man and a woman with gunshot wounds.

A third victim who had been shot in the leg had sought shelter in the Carls Jr.

across the street, as did a fourth person who had suffered an ankle injury during the escape.

The gunshot victims were taken to San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, where they were treated and later released.

Yeah,

we responded to a report of an active shooter here at about quarter to one this afternoon.

Pursuant to our protocol, we immediately entered and searched the building.

We located

what we believed before

shooting victims and one person with a self-inflicted gunshot wound who we believe at this point may be the shooter, but that's all we know right now.

All right, thank you.

The only casualty from the attack on YouTube's headquarters was the suspected shooter.

Early reports suggested that it was a domestic situation in which the male victim was targeted, but further investigation dispelled those rumors.

No, the attack was random, police concluded.

carried out by a 38-year-old Iranian-born woman named Nassim Agdam, who had lived in California since her late teens.

Nassim Agdam was a content creator.

She labeled herself a model, an actress, and a comedian.

Others called her a vegan extremist.

Ogdam posted using the username Nassime Sabs, My name is Nassime Sabs.

Some of her content focused on animal rights and veganism,

but she also produced exercise videos and music parodies with fever dream-like visuals that blurred the line between amateurish and genius.

Since 2013, the prolific Nassim Agdam posted hundreds of videos across multiple accounts and platforms, tallying nearly 9 million views.

The advertising revenue generated from her relative popularity was Nassim's main source of income.

until late 2016.

A YouTube policy change around that time resulted in stricter content moderation and age restrictions, which led to widespread demonetization among creators who referred to the implementation as the adpocalypse.

Many YouTubers who relied on ad revenue suddenly found themselves in an algorithmic black hole.

Smaller creators were especially affected since most didn't have a direct line to an actual human being at YouTube and could not effectively navigate the company's new automated filtering scrutiny, Nassim Esabs included.

Nassim posted examples of her losses on her website.

Screenshots showed that she was averaging about 200,000 views per month in early 2016, but those views were cut in half by the end of the year.

Even when Nassim had a successful month by her standards, the payout was putrid, a paltry 10 cents for 367,000 views.

Nassim had a theory.

Those who want to inform people against the system and big companies get censored, she wrote on her website.

Big Pharma and Big Food did not appreciate her promotion of veganism, she assumed.

Nassim provided more details in a video.

And if you go and check my videos, you see that my new videos hardly get views, and my old videos that used to get many views

stopped getting views.

So this is because I'm being filtered.

Nassim explained that her popular abdominal workout video in which she is fully clothed and simply doing sit-ups and leg lifts was age-restricted for being inappropriate.

YouTube rejected her appeal.

Meanwhile, Nassim pointed out, scantily clad pop stars like Nikki Minaj and Miley Cyrus were essentially simulating sex on stage and videos without restriction.

Something wasn't adding up.

People like me are not good for big businesses, like for animal business,

for

medicine business, and for many other businesses.

That's why they are discriminating and censoring us.

Dictatorship exists in all countries, but with different tactics, Nassim wrote on her website.

They only care for personal short-term profits and do anything to reach their goals, even by fooling simple-minded people, hiding the truth, manipulating science and everything, putting public mental and physical health at risk, abusing non-human animals, polluting the environment, destroying family values, promoting materialism and sexual degeneration in the name of freedom, and turning people into programmed robots.

And then she disappeared.

Nassim's family reported her missing on April 2nd, 2018, because she had stopped answering her phone.

The next day, police in Mountain View, California, about 500 miles away from San Diego where she lived, found Nassim sleeping in her car in a Walmart parking lot.

She told them she'd had a disagreement with family and decided to run.

Throughout our entire interaction with her, she was calm and cooperative.

Mountain View PD recounted after the shooting.

There were no signs that Nassim Agdam was a danger to herself or the community.

The police contacted her family and removed her name from the missing persons list.

Back home, Nassim's brother Googled Mountain View and discovered it was about 35 minutes away from YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno.

She was always complaining that YouTube ruined her life, he told the media.

Nassim's brother said he called the cops back within an hour and told them there was probably a reason she was in the area.

He was worried that she might be planning something.

And she had a problem with YouTube and told him that

there's a reason she went all the way from San Diego to that.

So she might do something.

I mean, I didn't know she has a gun.

In fact, further investigation revealed that by the time Mountain View police had found Nassim sleeping in her car, she had already visited the YouTube campus to scope it out.

She had asked for directions to the main office under the guise of inquiring about a job.

Nassim had also visited a shooting range in San Francisco, where she struggled to operate the gun she had purchased legally 60 days prior.

The next day, because of the perceived inconsistency, the lack of transparency, and the draconian application of YouTube's monetization algorithms, which robbed her of her livelihood.

Nassim Agdam killed her.

Sorry.

I mean, unalived herself.

At this point in the investigation, it is believed that the suspect was upset with policies and practices of YouTube.

This appears to be the motive for this incident.

The shooting at YouTube's headquarters changed nothing in terms of overzealous content moderation policies, but it did serve as a wake-up call for Silicon Valley in another sense.

Companies began to rethink their trendy open space college campus style building concepts in favor of security.

Fences were built.

Metal detectors were installed.

Extra resources were allocated to beef up their trust and safety teams.

Tech companies hiring former military and law enforcement as private security was nothing new.

But paranoia had reached an all-time high during this period, especially among companies that had passionate user bases that could easily morph into existential threats.

This context is important to understand, to try or even begin to try to explain the drastic measures disguised as security that eBay, the Silicon Valley e-commerce pioneer, had employed a year later.

Of course, abuse of power by a corporation's private police is nothing new either.

There are countless examples throughout history of union busting, retaliating against whistleblowers, invading privacy.

But what eBay did was something else entirely.

What eBay did was almost too bizarre to be true.

A multinational Fortune 500 tech company wages a war of terror on a middle-aged married couple in Massachusetts on this episode of Swindled.

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They pay to play billions of taxpayer dollars that were wasted.

You pay tens of millions of dollars.

Dumping up the TBO10 records to hide the money.

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eBay seems to have tapped into something uniquely American and entrepreneurial.

It's an auction house that never sleeps, where anyone can be a buyer or a seller.

This group of bargain hunters are devoted eBay users from all over the country.

Their loyalty and enthusiasm is what has helped build eBay into the powerhouse it is today.

Veronica Zay told the New York Times that she'd only used eBay once before she was contracted to work at the company in May 2017.

Veronica started out as an intelligence operator at eBay's Global Intelligence Center, a group within the company's global security and resiliency department that was responsible for the physical security and reputation of eBay employees and facilities around the world.

Initially, Veronica was paid $25 an hour to monitor closed-circuit cameras and assist employees who were locked out of their offices at eBay headquarters in San Jose.

The days were long, Zay claimed, essentially never ending, since the department was always understaffed and she was constantly on call.

There was also promised promotions that never came, which was demoralizing.

That said, Veronica was grateful for the opportunity.

She was only 23 years old, but already felt like she had fallen behind in life due to her severe anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, and traumatic brain injury.

Before landing the security gig at eBay through a classified ad, Zay's only work experience was operating a roller coaster at California's Great America amusement park.

Veronica Zay's lack of experience was also the reason she couldn't recognize the abnormalities of the Global Intelligence Center's office environment and culture.

She had just assumed it was how every tech company operated.

However, Zay was wise enough to realize that there was something extremely off about her boss.

Jim Ball, eBay's senior director of safety and security, managed over 300 employees in 95 locations worldwide, including the GIC where Veronica Zay worked.

He was 45 years old and former CIA, apparently.

More recently, he had worked as private security for Bill Gates.

Ball also served on then-Vice President Joe Biden's security team when he attended the 2016 Academy Awards.

That same year, Jim Baug joined eBay at an annual salary of $275,000.

His prior experience as a government security professional was one of the main reasons he was hired.

Ball demonstrated an ability to solve difficult problems through unconventional means.

It was safe to say there was nothing conventional about working with this man.

Jim Baugh's subordinates have detailed his constant efforts to, quote, break them into loyal operatives.

He would turn the employees against one another for fun.

He would embarrass them publicly.

He loved to incite fear.

For example, on one occasion, Baug found a knife left behind on the campus barbecue grill and demonstrated the dangers such a neglectful act posed by repeatedly stabbing an office chair.

Another time, analysts returned to their work lockers to find them empty.

Ball had all their belongings dumped in trash bags to demonstrate the importance of internal security.

To really drive the point home, he played the jelly donut scene from the movie Full Metal Jacket.

That was another odd thing about Jim Ball.

He often communicated via movie clips.

He showed his subordinates a scene from American Gangster in which a man is casually executed on a crowded street to prove a point.

Ball showed the circle of trust scene from Meet the Parents to emphasize loyalty.

We're a family, Ball would remind the GIC crew, and I am Dad.

Dad would often start off his mornings in the office with a shot of whiskey or two.

Other eBay security personnel would join him.

It wasn't out of the ordinary for the second half of workdays to consist of aimless four-hour-long staff meetings with Jim, in which he would screen and pontificate about his movie clip of the day.

Other times, he would show them something horrific, like car crash videos in which decapitated bodies and twitching torsos were on full display.

Ba would watch intently to see which employees flinched at the gore.

In his mind, such responses were a sign of weakness, worthy of termination.

Jim Baugh seemed to get a kick out of firing people.

He could find any excuse, including but not limited to, crying, singing, chewing on pens, quote, trying to stir shit, not smiling in front of executives, etc.

Unsurprisingly, Baugh's low tolerance for anything resulted in constant turnover among the GIC staff.

When the smoke cleared, all that was left of eBay's Global Intelligence Center was Jim Baugh and a handful of young women, 24 years of age or younger.

Other eBay executives jokingly referred to them as Jim's Angels.

Jim was preparing his angels for war.

At random, he would order them into the parking lot to practice active shooter drills in front of befuddled employees from other departments.

Jim would slam his hands down onto car hoods, screaming, bang, you're dead.

You're all dead.

It all seemed a bit melodramatic.

But then in early April 2018, a shooter attacked YouTube in San Bruno, and Jim Ball's paranoia was justified.

eBay's headquarters in San Jose were similarly situated in the sense that it was a multi-building campus surrounded by neighboring residences and businesses, and thus particularly vulnerable to a similar attack.

In September 2018, the company announced plans to build a seven-foot-tall fence around the perimeter and enclose its courtyards, while eBay's security team remained on heightened alert.

One of the most unique and rewarding aspects of eBay is its community of sellers.

For company executives, it was also one of the most terrifying.

There was a very vocal minority who reacted to seemingly every policy change with criticism and vitriol.

The company could do nothing right in these people's eyes.

Behind closed doors, eBay executives referred to this group as the, quote, hillbilly garage cell merchants.

Could one of these disgruntled sellers snap and coordinate an assault on eBay HQ?

Maybe.

Was it likely?

Probably not.

Was eBay's security going to keep its eyes peeled for potential threats?

Absolutely.

And there was one pair of especially dangerous trolls who had been on the company's radar for years, Jim Baugh explained to Veronica Zay in June 2019.

These are very devious people, he informed.

I want you to track everything they post as part of a special assignment, Baugh said.

A special assignment that would haunt Veronica Zay for the rest of her life.

In 2004, four people met in California to push through a deal that left e-commerce giant eBay holding 28% of online classified site Craigslist.

Was eBay a wolf in sheep's clothing who exploited Craigslist as it launched its own classifieds website?

Or did Craigslist enter into this deal with eyes wide open?

I'm Aina Steiner.

You can follow our full coverage on the AuctionBites.com website.

Ina and David Steiner.

met at a party at North Adams State College in Massachusetts in the mid-1980s and quickly bonded over their, with all due respect, nerdy hobbies.

Aina, a research analyst, collected books.

David, a video producer, collected antique tools.

Together, they were unstoppable.

The couple married in 1988.

Perusing yard sales was one of the Steiner's favorite pastimes.

Like many collectors, Aina and David were immediately intrigued with the new internet auction website, eBay, when it launched in 1995.

However, it wasn't until 1999 that they tried it for themselves.

David attempted to list some old video equipment, but encountered numerous frustrations.

The Steiners looked for resources on how to effectively sell on eBay, but found little worthwhile.

An opportunity presented itself.

The Steiners launched Auction Bytes in November of that same year.

It started out as a paper newsletter, a trade publication of sorts, that included useful advice and resources for eBay users, as well as news and trends related to the emerging e-commerce industry.

After one issue, the Steiners took the logical step of turning Auction Bytes into a digital publication.

Ina did all the writing.

David managed the publishing, advertising, and web development.

It was an instant hit.

Auction Bytes became the Steiners' full-time profession.

Every aspect of the operation was handled at their home in Natick, a suburb of Boston.

Over the following decade, eBay expanded and evolved from a relatively simple auction website into a massive multinational e-commerce platform with 13,000 employees, 174 million shoppers, and a market value of $48 billion.

The Steiners and Auction Bytes were there to cover it every step of the way.

It's amazing when you put out one of your Auction Byte email newsletters.

Probably within 10 minutes people are cutting and pasting it onto eBay chatboards going, look what Ina has to say.

Oh, she knows this, she knows that.

By 2010, with over 600,000 readers, Auction Bytes had become the leading publisher and and number one source of news for e-commerce and online merchants.

Ina Steiner, who had written a book about the online marketplace in 2006, was a widely cited authority on all things eBay.

She had been quoted in every form of media, including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, CNN, CNBC, and more.

In 2011, the Steiners changed the name of Auction Bytes to e-commerce Bytes to better reflect what the website had evolved into.

In addition to eBay, Ina was now covering the inner workings of various e-commerce companies, including Amazon, Overstock, and Alibaba, as well as related online payment services such as PayPal.

We cover industry news.

So what I do is I follow what's happening and how it impacts sellers.

People would write to us and they would say, hey, I'm having a problem with Amazon or I'm having a problem with eBay.

And we'd say, well, let's put up a section where we can just be a conduit.

That's all we ever want to be, a conduit for sellers to tell their problems, tell their issues, share information.

And give them a voice.

And give them a voice.

eBay was quite supportive of the Steiners in the early days of their publication.

Dozens of eBay managers and employees had subscribed to the newsletter over the years.

The company would even invite Ina to interview its top executives on occasion.

I'm Ina Steiner, editor of Auctionbytes.com, and I'm joined by Meg Whitman, President and CEO of eBay.

Thank you for joining us, Meg.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for coming.

Thank you for being the voice of the community.

You've been at this now almost nine years, ten years?

However, the Steiners' cozy relationship with eBay began to change around 2012.

The couple noticed frequent critical comments about e-commerce bites coverage underneath their articles discussing the company.

In almost every case, the IP addresses of those commenters pointed to eBay's San Jose headquarters.

Even more concerning, under the guidance of a new chief executive, John Donahoe, the e-commerce giant falsely accused and reported e-commerce bites as a phishing website to the Steiner's web hosting company, a direct threat to the couple's only source of income.

According to Boston Magazine, eBay eventually retracted that report and admitted its error, but the relationship proved damaged beyond repair.

eBay was no longer willing to answer questions from Ina Steiner for her website.

She kept reporting on the company anyway.

And if the tone of the coverage changed, it was because the nature of eBay's business had changed.

The website's core users, the small-time sellers, felt alienated and forgotten as eBay wilted under the pressure of exponential growth and began catering to corporate sellers and established retailers in order to compete with Amazon.

What was once a magical marketplace of unique listings and niche collectibles had morphed into another gentrified thrift store that prioritized selling the same mass-produced cheap garbage that you could find everywhere else.

I'm Ina Steiner reporting for Auction Bytes and I hope eBay's watching and listening.

There was a small glimmer of hope that the Steiners could repair their relationship with eBay when CEO John Donahoe left to lead the PayPal spin-off in 2015, which paved the way for former lawyer and executive of Thompson Reuters, Devin Winnick, to take over.

Early on in his tenure, Winnick, Winnick, a New York transplant, had made public comments in support of a free press.

I side with a free media and a free press.

There's a strong public interest in a free press.

We've got to be really careful that powerful voices don't knock down what I call divergent points of view.

Behind the scenes, however, was an entirely different story.

A former eBay executive told the Silicon Valley Business Journal that Devin Winnick had, quote, an intense ego and couldn't couldn't handle criticism from even the tiniest entity.

He was more worried about how he looked than the real standing of the business, the former executive said.

We constantly just talked about just ignore them.

Winnig's inability to just ignore them was on display in 2018 when eBay threatened a YouTuber with a lawsuit and demanded the removal of a video because the company, quote, didn't like the tone.

That YouTuber, Casey Paris, was surprised he was even on eBay's radar.

How did you guys even find that video?

He asked the company.

Paris was told that eBay's security was always watching.

CEO Devin Winnick's thin skin would grow even thinner in 2019 after two activist hedge funds, Elliott Management and Starboard Value, purchased a stake in eBay.

Elliot especially had a reputation for driving profits and cutting costs by chopping off the head without hesitating.

When the hedge fund published an open letter accusing eBay of mis-execution, underperformance, and wasteful spending, Winig knew he had a target on his back.

It was important for him to control the narrative.

Of course, Ina Steiner was covering all of this on e-commerce bites.

Well, the context is important, too.

So the CEO had just been eviscerated by an activist investor who criticized wasteful spending and a lot of other problems at the company.

And indeed, eBay was experiencing negative growth under this CEO.

eBay was experiencing experiencing negative growth, and yet, quote, eBay CEO Devin Winnick earns 152 times that of employees.

That was the headline of an April 10th, 2019 post on e-commerce bites.

eBay had announced mass layoffs a year earlier.

Its sellers were complaining about increasing fees, and Devin Winnick was taking home $18 million a year.

It was a tough pill to swallow.

Perhaps that bitter pill would go down a bit easier with the help of a fresh pint from eBay's new campus bar.

Did you know eBay built a lavish NYC pub-style lounge?

Read an e-commerce Bytes headline on May 21st, 2019.

Aina Steiner reported that Devin Winnig had quietly repurposed the former PayPal office space into a no-expensive spared replica of his favorite New York City watering hole.

Aina included links to the contractor's website in her article.

Main Street has infused so much more energy, so much more pride amongst our employee base, both here in Silicon Valley and to our employees around the world.

And I don't think I would have said before that a building could do that.

That's Wendy Jones, eBay's vice president of global operations.

After seeing the article about eBay's new bar on e-commerce bites, she fired off an email.

Why in the world would they think it's okay to do this?

This is ridiculous and has caused serious problems.

Not only was it embarrassing in its extravagance, which Wendy did not mention in her emails, but it was also a potential security risk.

The project was removed from the contractor's website by the following day.

Ina Steiner, however, did not remove her post on e-commerce bytes, which elicited this response from eBay's chief communications officer, Steve Weimer, quote, We're going to crush this lady.

Weimer had only been working at eBay for a few months.

He had spent the beginning of his career working for three different Republican senators before heading to Silicon Valley for an executive position at TiVo and then next door.

He had made powerful friends along the way, including multiple San Jose mayors.

Welcome to the eBay family, Steve.

What do you bring to the table?

I have an insecurity complex.

Perfect.

You'll fit right in.

After Ina Steiner's most recent article, Steve Weimer contacted a PR consultant about potential avenues in dealing with the persistent thorn in the company's side.

He was perturbed that the company had let its Ina Ina-Steiner problem slide for so long.

I'm just no longer accepting ignore as a broader strategy and want to fight back, he wrote.

Look forward to talking ASAP to get your assessment of how to do that most effectively.

The PR consultant wrote back with, quote, alternative digital methods on how to reduce the Steiners and e-commerce by its impact on eBay.

Option one.

was to create or promote company-friendly content that would rank higher than Ina's articles and search engine results.

Option two was to terminate the Steiners' eBay accounts for violating the company's terms of use.

eBay chose none of the above.

It was clear that legal remedies were not and would not be effective.

The company had other plans.

Veronica Zay was already familiar with the Steiners when Jim Baugh recruited her for the special assignment.

In the past, Baug had announced that he was going to write an anonymous threatening letter to the couple regarding their articles, but that letter was never sent.

Now, Baug claimed, he'd been given the green light by the C-suite to deal with it, quote, off the radar.

Just get it done, Wendy Jones, his boss, had told him.

I don't want to know the details, just make sure you sync with Weimer.

Bob explained the importance of the assignment to his team.

The Steiners were a major security threat, he said.

They were doxing eBay users.

They were inciting death threats to the CEO.

They were working with Elliott Management to sow Discord, which would result in additional additional mass layoffs.

And the last time eBay had mass layoffs, Bob demonstrated with video proof, an employee jumped in front of a train.

We cannot let that happen again.

Jim Bob was also convinced that the Steiners were behind an anonymous Twitter account that used the handle Fido Master, which had been, quote, relentlessly trolling eBay on Twitter for years.

Fido Master would often refer to Devin Winnig as Devil Boy in his posts and receive upwards of 10 likes for his efforts.

Despite the relative obscurity, the account was a major source of frustration for eBay executives.

Unmasking the troll and proving Fidomaster's link to the Steiners was also part of the plan.

But first, Jumbaugh ordered Veronica Zay and Stephanie Stockwell, another intelligence analyst, to monitor the Steiners' website and social media posts around the clock.

He told them to buy a new laptop for this specific purpose and use VPNs to screenshot every single post and send them to him via WhatsApp so he could keep keep executive leadership up to date.

In the meantime, Boss said he and Brian Gilbert, a retired Santa Clara police captain who now worked for eBay's global security team, were going to fly to Boston to do a little research and send a message of their own.

When David Steiner opened his garage on Saturday, June 8th, 2019, he found that message.

A neighbor walking his dog called out to David, Hey, your fence has been tagged.

David walked outside to inspect.

Sure enough, in big bright letters on his new white fence, it read, Fido Master.

Aina Steiner recognized the name.

Fidomaster was a known critic of eBay and often engaged with her articles, but in this context, she wasn't sure what it meant.

It didn't make any sense, she told the Boston Globe.

Aina says she even googled the term to see if maybe it was some kind of slang the kids were using these days.

Clearly, Jim Baugh's message had failed to register.

David cleaned the fence and Aina went back to work.

There was always some juicy e-commerce news developing.

You ready for this?

eBay is suing Amazon, claiming that the online retail giant tried to poach its sellers.

This is actually an extraordinary lawsuit.

An extraordinary lawsuit indeed.

eBay Rico lawsuit meant to curb seller exodus to Amazon?

asked Aina Steiner in an August 1st, 2019 article.

Quote, eBay's CEO has been unable to stop a decline in marketplace sales, but trying to dissuade sellers from turning to Amazon and trying to get Amazon to stop recruiting sellers may not be the best tactic.

The comments underneath the article were typical of the internet.

Poor eBay, the little puppy continues trying to nip at the heels of the big dog, wrote Thieves Bay.

The delusional CEO with more of his nonsense, chimed RL15.

Isn't eBay the definition of a corrupt organization?

asked user iHeart Jack Sparrow.

Less than 30 minutes after the article's publication, eBay CEO Devin Winnick texted Chief Chief Communications Officer Steve Weimer.

Ina is out with a hot piece on the litigation.

If we are ever going to take her down, now is the time.

On it, Weimer replied, before contacting Jim Ball.

Winnick suggests we take her down.

I saw it, Ball replied.

Hatred is a sin, Weimer wrote.

I am very sinful.

Let me ask you this, Ball replied.

ignoring whatever that was.

Do we need her entire site shut down?

I'm not fucking around with her anymore.

Amen.

I want her done, Weimer demanded.

She is a biased troll who needs to get burned down.

I'll embrace managing any bad fallout, Weimer added.

We need to stop her, he continued, using Cap's lock for emphasis.

If it doesn't stop, we are all done.

eBay Corporate is willing to absorb any legal exposure.

Steve Weimer instructed Jim Baugh to take any actions necessary to neutralize the Steiners and identify Fidomaster.

It was a, quote, direct order from the CEO.

If I can neutralize Ina's website in two weeks or less, does that work for you?

Ball later asked.

I want to see ashes, Weimer responded.

As long as it takes, whatever it takes.

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I started getting harassed online through Twitter, through unwanted email subscriptions, and these were really disturbing emails.

August 8th, 2019, is when the emails started.

Aina and David Steiner's inbox was overflowing with new mailing list sign-ups.

There were subscriptions for the Communist Party, InfoWars, Scientology, the Satanic Temple, essential oil recipes, Heather's IBS news, and every type of pornography you could think of, and some you wouldn't want to.

Very funny.

Clearly, someone was playing a harmless little prank on the Steiners.

Or maybe not.

On Twitter, Aina started receiving private messages from an account with the username Tui Ile that used a skeleton mask as its profile picture.

Aina, what's your problem with eBay?

Tui Ile asked.

You know that's how we pay rent.

Aina didn't reply.

But the more she ignored the DMs, the more unhinged and misspelled they became.

WTF, what's it going to take for you to answer me?

I guess I'm going to have to get your attention another way, bitch.

You don't have the balls to talk to me.

Stop hiding behind your computer screen, you fucking cunt.

Yes, yes, that's perfect, Jim Baugh approved.

Stephanie Popp, the 32-year-old senior manager of eBay's Global Intelligence Center, was controlling the Tui Elay account.

Each message was reviewed and approved by Brian Gilbert and Philip Cook.

another retired Santa Clara police captain now employed by eBay.

The plan was for the messages to become increasingly disturbing before culminating with the public doxing of the Steiners' private information, such as their home address and telephone numbers.

But only, if necessary, maybe David and Ina would heed to Yele's warnings and stop publishing negative articles about eBay.

If not, Jumbaugh presented to his staff in an eBay conference room.

We move on to phase two.

What's phase two, you ask?

Watch this.

Can someone get those lights?

Easy delivery for Hitler!

Hitler!

Hitler?

Hitler!

Where are you going?

Wait a minute.

Wait a minute, fellas.

Wait a minute.

I didn't order any pizza.

You order pizza, we bring you pizza.

That's a scene from the 1988 comedy film, Johnny B.

Good, starring Anthony Michael Hall, in which two teenagers arrange for a never-ending series of unwanted deliveries to their football coach's house, including pizzas, an exterminator, a male stripper, and an elephant.

As ingenious as it is hilarious.

It is the inspiration for the second phase, Ball proclaimed.

We will send the Steiners so many random things that they'll be too distracted to publish on e commerce bytes.

Veronica Zay and an intern were tasked with purchasing prepaid gift cards from a Safeway supermarket in Santa Clara for use and ordering non-traceable deliveries.

Ball told them to wear hats at the store so they wouldn't be recognized.

Let the games begin.

The next day, the Steiners had a voicemail from a business in Arizona saying there was an issue with their order.

The billing address didn't match the shipping address, and additional confirmation would be required for delivery.

What order?

David didn't remember ordering anything, so he called the company back.

I got a phone call from

a shop in Arizona that said that

they couldn't deliver the wet specimen that we had ordered.

And not having any idea what a wet specimen was, I asked her.

David was informed that a wet specimen was a form of taxidermy in which a biological sample is fully preserved with a mixture of formalin and alcohol.

What kind of wet specimen?

David asked.

A fetal pig, the associate told him over the phone.

It costs $74.99 with shipping and tax.

Still interested?

That's when my heart sank, Ina told 60 Minutes, realizing that the recent online harassment had transcended to the physical realm.

Because I thought, who might be angry at something I wrote?

And I couldn't figure it out.

I mean, we were desperately trying to think who could it be.

The Steiners called the Natick police on August 10th, just for documentation purposes, at the very least.

An officer arrived at their home to take a report, and as he was leaving, he spotted another package on their front porch.

Ina took the box inside and opened it.

So he waited.

And when I opened up the package, it looked like it looked like flesh and hair.

And

I kind of yelled or shrieked.

The cop inspected the contents.

There was flesh and hair, but it was fake.

It was a Halloween mask of a bloody pig face, the same mask worn by the killer in the Saw movie franchise, noted the officer in his report before leaving.

A few minutes later, Ina sat down at a computer where a DM from Tui LA was waiting.

Do I have your attention now?

It was a psychopath.

Who could devise these torturous packages and the depravity?

More packages followed.

Live spiders, live cockroaches, fly larvae, all of which were turned over to the police.

The Steiners neighbors received barely legal-branded porno magazines in David's name, an attempt to humiliate the couple in their own community.

Ina also received a phone call from the Adam and Eve sex toy company.

following up on her expressed interest in becoming a potential franchise owner.

It was also juvenile and silly.

But then it got dark.

David received a book in the mail titled Grief Diaries: Surviving Loss of a Spouse, followed by a delivery of a funeral wreath.

As we were going through this, we could only react to what was happening.

As journalists, we were documenting things on a regular basis.

We were getting in touch with people who had delivered items to us.

We were trying to deliver a sane, calm message to the police,

and yet we were terrified.

You get my gifts, cunt?

Tuya Lay asked nicely.

Many families, including mine, make money to pay for food, clothes, and rent by selling on eBay, the account tweeted publicly.

Aina, when you hurt our business, you hurt our family.

People will do anything to protect family.

And just like that, the delivery stopped.

Little did the Steiners know it was time for phase three.

On Thursday, August 15th, 2019, Jim Ball and Veronica Zay flew from San Jose to Boston.

They were joined by Dave Harville, eBay's 48-year-old director of global resiliency.

Harville was a former Army captain and served as a subject matter expert on weapons of mass destruction for the Department of Justice's Office of Domestic Preparedness.

Zay called Dave Harville, quote, one of the rudest, most corrupt, and misogynistic people she had ever met.

But he was crucial to the the plan.

The plan was to travel to Natick to install a GPS tracking device on the Steiners Toyota RAV4.

Before the trip, Ball, Say, and Harville had practiced installing the device on a similar vehicle in the eBay parking lot.

The purpose of the GPS tracker, according to Ball, was to see if the Steiners were meeting up with members of Elliott management.

It would also be worthwhile to find out if there were any obvious displays of newfound wealth at the couple's modest home.

When the eBay trio landed in Boston, they rented two vehicles from Enterprise, a Dodge caravan and a Ford Explorer, before checking into the Ritz-Carlton.

They waited for the cover of night to drive to Natick.

Ballze and Harville joined a conference call with Stephanie Popp, who remained in California, where she monitored the Natick police's radio dispatch using an app on her phone.

However, upon arrival at the Steiners' home around 11:30 p.m., the eBayers found nothing but disappointment.

The plan to install the GPS device was foiled by a locked garage.

The following morning, Friday, August 16, 2019, Dave Harville walked to a nearby hardware store and used his eBay-issued credit card to purchase tools to break into the Steiner's garage.

Better prepared this time, Baal Harville, and Zay returned to Natick.

To their surprise, when they arrived, They found David Steiner outside on a ladder, installing new security cameras.

Ida was handing him tolls from a second-story window when she noticed the unfamiliar vehicle.

Black van.

New York plates, she announced as it drove away.

Later that day, as David Steiner was giving a ride home to a friend, he noticed that same black van with New York plates in his rearview mirror.

It followed him for several blocks.

I can still feel how every hair on the back of my neck stood up, David told the Boston Globe.

I saw David pull out of the driveway with our 81-year-old friend, and we had just installed a new security camera, and I saw a black van that I had seen earlier in the day follow him and I was convinced they were going to follow him to our friend's house and attack him physically.

I was terrified that they were going to break into our home.

David Steiner told Boston Magazine that he made a series of quick turns and then hid behind a bush around a bend.

When the van rolled past, David's friend snapped a photo of the license plate, which they turned over to the police, but unfortunately, the final digit was obscured, rendering it useless.

By the time David returned home, he was having a full-blown panic attack.

He couldn't catch his breath and was sweating profusely.

Ina thought her husband was having a heart attack.

At the same time, the eBay team returned to Enterprise to exchange the black van for a different vehicle.

They knew they'd been spotted.

Veronica Zay heard Natick police discussing the Steiner's calls on the radio.

The eBay crew regrouped at the Ritz-Carlton.

Baug announced that the deliveries would resume, so they brainstormed about what else they could send.

Harville suggested placing a running chainsaw on the Steiners' doorstep, or maybe human shit.

Ba pitched sending a dead rat to the couple, or better yet a coffin.

Maybe we should kill their dog, someone suggested, not realizing that Maggie the auction hound had already passed away years earlier.

The Steiners were up against pure evil, it seemed, and they were paralyzed with fear.

The couple felt imprisoned in their own home.

David started sleeping in the front master bedroom to monitor the security cameras day and night.

Ina slept in a back bedroom next to a baseball bat.

She had also stacked baking trays on top of a laundry basket in front of the back door.

What we wanted to do is to make sure that if someone did break in, that at least one of us could either call the police or escape.

The Steiners installed battery-powered alarms and dash cams.

They asked a friend to block their driveway with a car.

They froze their credit, set up informed deliveries to preview any packages, and they canceled all their plans with friends and family because they didn't want to subject them to the same abuse.

But the most distressing part about all of it was the wait for what would happen next.

The Steiners had no idea what to expect, but they were prepared for the worst.

When it would get dark out at night, that's when I would really be terrified.

Ina and David were almost certain it was all coming to an end on August 17th.

At 4.30 in the morning, a black vehicle pulled up to their home.

David, who had hardly slept in weeks, watched through the window as an unknown man stepped out of the car and pulled a large black bag from the back seat.

Call 911, he yelled to Aina.

He has a gun.

Turns out, it was not a gun.

It was a pizza, just like the movie Johnny B.

Good.

Another pizza arrived later that night, and another the following day.

Uh, life was a nightmare.

It was three weeks of hell.

It built, it built, and every day was another disturbance, another incident, another police cruiser in front of our house.

They said they were there for the block party, the yard sale, or the sex.

all of which had been advertised on the internet.

Sure enough, the Steiners checked Craigslist and found multiple posts with her address on full display.

One of the ads read: quote: Male-female couple seeking activity partner in Natick, Massachusetts.

Mature 50s married couple seeking singles or other couples open to exploring threesomes, BDSM cross-dressing, 420 friendly.

This has been the Steiners' house for the past five nights, Jim Baugh wrote in the eBay group text, linking to a clip from the 2003 comedy Old School.

Hello.

Yeah?

I'm here for the gangbang.

On August 18th, 2019, desperate for groceries, David Steiner decided to risk it all by leaving the house.

Immediately, he noticed a silver GMC SUV following him.

He called Aina and told her to alert the police and he would lead the stalkers to the downtown station.

My husband is about to call too.

He's in his car.

He's being, we're being stalked and he's out.

I think he was on 135.

He will let you know.

He's being stalked.

We have had stalking incidences on Einesteiner.

Who is stalking him?

We don't know.

Every day we end up having to call the police because we're getting suspicious packages, unwanted deliveries made to our house, and we had a stalking incident on Friday.

Of course, the eBay team heard the police dispatch and stopped its pursuit.

Paul took delight in the torture he was inflicting.

They're seeing ghosts now, LOL, he texted to the group.

They think everyone is following them, and they call the police every 10 minutes.

What Jimbaugh didn't realize is that this time, David Steiner had photographed their license plate in all its glory.

The next day, Natick PD called the Steiners to report they had run the plates and determined that the vehicle belonged to Enterprise Rent-A-Car.

A quick phone call discovered that the person who was currently renting that vehicle in question was named Veronica Zay.

A simple Google search then revealed that Veronica Zay was employed by eBay.

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But I think it's important to note that we didn't know it was eBay.

That was what was terrifying.

And so I can tell you it was devastating when the first glimpse that anybody at eBay was involved.

And it's shattering to spend 20 years, my career, reporting on e-commerce and helping small businesses to find out that

the scope, meaning how many people did this to us.

That within the company it was all the way up and it was not a secret between two people.

On Wednesday, August 21st, 2019, Veronica Zay was awakened in her hotel room by a phone call.

It was a detective with Natica PD.

He asked if she had time to speak.

No, not right now, she told him, but offered to meet in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in half an hour.

Zay hung up and ran directly to Jim Baugh's room for guidance.

Jim answered the door, still obviously drunk from the night before.

What should I do?

Veronica asked in a panic.

Before Baugh could even offer advice, Veronica's phone rang again.

It was a Natick area code.

Baal grabbed the phone.

Hello?

Yeah, this is her husband.

She does not want to speak with you.

And then he hung up.

Grab your bags, he instructed Zay.

We're calling you a cab to take you to the airport.

While waiting for a flight back to California, Veronica Zay deleted her LinkedIn profile as instructed.

But it was already too late.

Natick detectives had already seen it.

They'd also traced the other rental vehicle to Dave Harville and the purchases of pizzas and the funeral wreath to a prepaid gift card obtained in Silicon Valley, a few miles from eBay headquarters.

And soon they would have surveillance video of those transactions.

That's what spurred Natick detectives to reach out to eBay's security department for assistance in the investigation via the email portal on its website.

They believed that maybe it was a few bad apples and the company would be more than willing to hand them over.

What Natick police didn't expect was for the recipient of that email to also be part of the conspiracy.

Brian Gilbert, the former Santa Clara police captain and artist who tagged Fido Master onto the Steiner's fence, was the person who responded.

Gilbert claimed he had never heard of Veronica Zay or Dave Harville, but agreed to meet the Natick detectives in person as soon as he could make it to Boston.

That would at least buy the eBay crew enough time to align their cover stories.

Jim Baugh instructed Stephanie Stockwell to prepare a phony person of interest report on Ina and David Steiner to justify eBay's investigation of the couple and their security presence in Boston.

In the narrative, I need you to write that they have made direct threats to eBay, Winnig, and our employees.

Parentheses, make it up, Baug wrote.

Brian Gilbert agreed to turn over the phony dossier to the Natick police during their meeting.

Quote, definitely want to make them, the Steiners, look crazy.

Additionally, Gilbert said he would tell the investigators that Veronica Zay and Dave Harville were in Boston to attend a conference.

Then they could say Harville rented a car to visit his sister who lives in the area.

And Zay, an intelligence analyst, rented a car and drove to Natick on her own to investigate the threats against the Steiners made by the Twitter user Tui LA.

If need be, they can pin that Twitter account on someone of Samoan descent, like the username suggests.

The former cops, Brian Gilbert and Philip Cook, have connections.

The cops obviously have nothing else to do in Natick, Brian Gilbert wrote in the group text.

We know the targets have been very impacted by this op.

Perfect time for next phase.

That's right.

There was another phase, the final act.

Brian Gilbert would reach out to the Steiners on behalf of eBay security and offer them assistance with the harassment they'd been receiving from Tui LA and others.

This act of goodwill would forever ingratiate the company with the couple, who would then tone down their published criticisms.

And who knows, maybe they'd even post some flattering news once in a while.

Jim Baugh had named this phase the White Knight Strategy.

It was a go.

Just made phone contact.

Gilbert texted the group after speaking to the Steiners.

They are totally rattled and immediately referred me to the Natick PD.

Ina said, talk to the detective and then hung up the phone.

Ina was a bitch.

Well, that didn't go as planned, but hopefully the meeting with NPD would alleviate some heat.

Brian Gilbert flew to Boston on August 22nd, 2019, and repeated the eBay team's calculated lies.

Zay and Harville attended a conference.

Zay was investigating the harassing tweets.

eBay, as a company, had no involvement in the intimidation and threats to silence the Steiners.

Natick PD wasn't convinced.

They contacted the FBI and the U.S.

Attorney's Office in Massachusetts, which opened an official investigation.

At the same time, eBay's legal department had become aware of the situation and had launched an internal investigation at the company.

Jim Baugh sent a lengthy text to Steve Weimer on August 23rd, hoping to cash in on that earlier promise.

Quote, my team ran an op on our friend in Boston.

Nothing illegal occurred, and we were actually intending to team up with her and get her on our side in a positive manner.

However, small town police got a couple of rental card plates and tracked it back to my people in the hotel they were staying at.

They sent a note to eBay Investigation's global asset protection team, who then passed it to legal.

Now they are conducting an internal investigation on us.

We are cooperating, but I know they realize something is off.

We will continue to cooperate, but not sure how much longer we can keep this up.

If there is any way to get some top cover, that would be great.

Anticipating interviews with eBay's legal department, Ball instructed his team to delete everything associated with the special assignment, including emails, WhatsApp messages, Twitter accounts, everything.

And whatever you do, Ball warned, keep Devin Winnick and Steve Weimer's names out of any conversations.

Those internal interviews with eBay Legal occurred between August 26th and the 28th of 2019.

They were conducted by phone.

So naturally, the GIC members being questioned gathered in a conference room and turned on the speakerphone so everyone could coach one another and coordinate their stories.

Jim Baugh, Stephanie Popp, Dave Harville, Stephanie Stockwell, and Veronica Zay all stuck to their fabrications.

Two days later, Baugh, Popp, and Harville were placed on administrative leave.

Later that day, Baugh quietly directed one of his subordinates to bring all the GIC's computers to his house so they could wipe them clean.

A week later, on September 6th, Stephanie Popp sent five new harassing tweets targeting the Steiners.

It was an attempt to persuade investigators that those responsible for the campaign of terror were still at large.

It did not work.

Jim Baugh, Dave Harville, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, and Stephanie Stockwell were fired by eBay later that day.

Veronica Zay was terminated by her contracting agency.

Philip Cook, who somehow escaped detection, was promoted.

But then he too was fired about nine months later when the federal criminal charges were filed.

We're here today to announce charges against

six former

employees of eBay

for orchestrating an extensive and disturbing campaign of harassment and intimidation against a middle-aged couple living in Natick, Massachusetts.

That couple published an online newsletter that reviewed and was sometimes critical of eBay.

eBay executives were not merely unhappy with the victim's coverage, they were enraged.

One of those executives texted that he wanted to, quote, crush this lady, unquote.

The result, as alleged in the complaint, was 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.

It's being called one of the strangest corporate scandal cases in recent memory.

A very unusual story developing this afternoon.

Six former eBay security officers charged by the FBI with stalking.

The eBay employees are accused of weaponizing the internet by harassing a Massachusetts couple who ran an online e-commerce newsletter.

Feds claim the harassment included deliveries to the couple's home of a bloody pig's head mask.

Inspired by the movie Johnny Be Good, they ordered everything from live spiders, a box of cockroaches, a preserved pig fetus, a book of advice on surviving the loss of a spouse, and a hustler magazine mailed not to the couple, but to their next door neighbors with their names on on it.

They even sent strangers to the couple's natick home using a fake Craigslist ad encouraging swingers to knock on the couple's door after 10 p.m.

to quote party.

Now that was apparently only part of the strategy though.

The eBay employees are accused of then notifying the couple of the harassment and offering help what prosecutors are calling a white night strategy.

Now it was called the white night strategy.

What happened was they threatened and harassed this couple.

The woman was a blogger.

And then they wanted to go in and try and write the situation so it made eBay look as though it was doing a great thing, but in essence it was not.

On June 15th, 2020, six former eBay employees were charged with conspiracy to commit cyber stalking and conspiracy to tamper with a witness.

The seventh employee, Philip Cook, received the same charges later.

Jim Baugh, the ringleader, and David Harville received additional counts for stalking and destroying and falsifying records.

All seven would plead guilty.

This was a determined, systematic effort by senior employees of a major company to destroy the lives of a couple in Natick, all because they published content that company executives didn't like, Massachusetts U.S.

Attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters.

For a while, they succeeded, psychologically devastating these victims for weeks as they desperately tried to figure out what was going on.

For their crimes, Jim Baugh, 47 years old, was sentenced to 57 months in prison.

David Harville, 50 years old, was sentenced to 24 months in prison.

Philip Cook, 56, received 18 months.

Stephanie Popp, 34, received 12 months.

Stephanie Stockwell, 28, received 12 months of home confinement.

Brian Gilbert, 56, received the same because he was now suffering from colorectal cancer.

And Veronica Zay, 28 years old, also received one year of home confinement.

Though in Zay's sentencing statement, she claimed the ordeal had ruined her life.

Quote, the actions from the eBay team were disgusting.

I am disgusted with myself for my involvement.

I truly do not understand how my friends and family still love me, and that's what keeps me up at night.

The knowledge that I was involved in something that made anyone else feel like I do.

This is hell.

I made stupid choices.

I regret them every day.

I will never be able to forgive myself.

I'm sorry.

Ina and David Steiner appeared at every one of the sentencing hearings to testify how they had been affected.

There is a sadness in our lives, and a sense of safety we used to take for granted is gone, David said.

The Steiners hadn't been privy to the breadth of the campaign against them until the criminal complaint was unsealed in June 2020.

The fact that the CEO and other high-level executives at eBay were so fixated on them was truly baffling.

In fact, the Steiners were disappointed that those high-level high-level executives, Devin Winnick, Steve Weimer, and Wendy Jones, had not been charged with anything, seeing as how all the evidence pointed to their involvement and direction.

As it turns out, the federal government had not even bothered to interview those three executives as part of its investigation.

Why not?

Because eBay said there was no need.

eBay says an independent special committee is now investigating.

That committee says eBay does not tolerate this kind of behavior.

eBay apologizes to the affected individuals and is sorry that they were subjected to this.

On March 21st, 2021, a lawyer for eBay's legal department gave a 34-slide PowerPoint presentation to the Office of the U.S.

Attorney for Massachusetts to explain why the company and its executives should not be criminally charged.

eBay readily admitted that some of the actions its employees had taken were, quote, clearly criminal.

However, based on its own internal investigation, which it never turned over to federal authorities, the company claimed Devin Winnick's conduct, while maybe negligent or reckless, should not be considered criminal.

The same goes for Steve Weimer and Wendy Jones, the company said.

And the U.S.

Attorney's Office said, okay, fair enough.

Busy news morning, led by, in fact, something certainly unexpected: that the departure of eBay CEO Devin Winnick stepping down as the company's president and CEO immediately replaced by the CFO was

so CEO Devin Winnick had been allowed to gracefully exit the company in September 2019, claiming he could no longer see eye to eye with the board.

For his troubles, he was awarded a $57 million severance package and retained the rights to legal and travel costs for any future litigation.

In legal documents and statements, Winnick has maintained his innocence, claiming that any damning text messages, such as his infamous take her down quote, were taken out of context and that he was referring to lawful action, not directing a series of bizarre crimes.

Devin Winnick now sits on the board of directors for General Motors and has co-founded his own AI company that, get this, serves journalists.

Wendy Jones, eBay's former senior vice president of global operations, was also cleared of any wrongdoing despite evidence to the contrary and despite Jim Baugh being a direct report.

Jones retired from eBay in December 2020.

Steve Weimer, the chief communications officer, was fired by eBay in September 2019 for his reckless conduct as it related to the stalking scandal.

But thanks to his friends in high places, i.e.

the mayor of San Jose, it didn't take long for Steve to land on his feet.

Hello, my name is Steve Weimer.

I'm the CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley.

And if there was any question that maybe the Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley were unaware of Weimer's involvement in the stalking scandal, check out this tweet from September 10th, 2020, in which the organization references one of Steve's text messages that's cited in the criminal complaints against the eBay defendants.

The search is over.

We are thrilled to announce our next president and CEO, Steve Weimer.

We look forward to seeing the impact he will make on thousands of youth across Silicon Valley.

Hashtag whatever it takes.

Do you know what it takes for a Fortune 500 company to settle all the federal criminal charges levied against it?

About $3 million, apparently.

eBay will pay a $3 million fine to settle criminal charges after former employees launched a cyber-stalking campaign against the NATO couple.

Despite its PowerPoint lobbying, in January 2024, the U.S.

Justice Department did charge eBay the company with four counts of stalking, one count of witness tampering, and one count of obstruction of justice.

The $3 million fine was part of a deferred prosecution agreement in which the charges against the company could be dismissed if it complies with certain conditions.

It was another slap on the wrist that left the victims in the case unsatisfied.

However, Ina and David Steiner have no intention of letting eBay and its indicted and unindicted co-conspirators walk away scot-free.

Today, we filed a lawsuit here in the federal courthouse

to hold all those defendants who were responsible for stalking and intimidating and threatening to kill the Steiners accountable.

The directives in this case to stalk the Steiners and intimidate the Steiners came from the top management of eBay.

And just so we're all clear,

the top leaders of this company,

eBay had an opportunity

to take charge and corporate responsibility for the actions of its employees and its leaders.

And instead,

they didn't hold their leaders responsible for this action.

Instead, they took the coward's way out.

They allowed their leaders to resign, and one of their leaders got a $57 million severance package from eBay.

Now I ask you, what message does that send to corporate America?

In an amended lawsuit filed in March 2023, the Steiners alleged that the seven defendants who had pleaded guilty, plus Devin Winnig, Steve Weimer, Wendy Jones, eBay, the corporation, and others, engaged in a conspiracy to intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk, and silence them.

The effects of the conspiracy were devastating and caused permanent harm to David and Ina's physical and mental health.

They suffer from anxiety, panic attacks, persistent and debilitating concerns about their physical safety, habitual insomnia, embarrassment, humiliation, shame, and perpetual fear that they are being followed and tracked.

I mean, we are really depressed

because our life is different now and it's hard to see what's ahead in the future.

Not to mention the toll it took on their business.

Sources became afraid to work with the Steiners out of fear of attracting abuse to themselves.

As a result, e-commerce Bites' revenue has declined by 64% since the events and hasn't recovered.

David and Ina have been stripped of their financial security.

This was basically this was corporate terrorism.

I mean from a personal vantage point, you know, I've been married to Ina for 33 years and for 22 of those years

we've worked side by side on this site.

We're extremely proud of e-commerce bikes.

You know, it's our passion.

We've helped lots of people.

And to think that eBay weaponized, they weaponized their security department to make

death threats against my wife and to try and burn our business down.

It's been almost six years since the campaign of terror against them.

And the Steiners remain distrustful, depressed, and angry.

They can't receive a package at home without triggering their PTSD.

Even the Steiners' wedding anniversary has been forever tainted since they spent their 31st peeking through the blinds, waiting to be murdered.

We have eight security cameras around our house now.

We have door alarms that sound every time we open the front and back doors.

We

take circuitous routes anytime we go places.

We're very aware of people around us.

And we drive with a video camera in the rear window of our car to make sure that no one is tailing us.

Yeah, it's had a a lasting impact.

Ina and David are seeking $12 million in damages for the harm caused to their business alone.

Additionally, they're pursuing individual claims against every defendant for intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy, defamation, trespass, false imprisonment, and more.

If a jury rules in their favor between compensatory and punitive damages, the Steiners could be compensated up to $700 million.

However, it's a complicated case considering the number of defendants and the judge overseeing it has urged the parties to settle.

But so far, all mediation efforts have failed and the case is set to go to trial by the end of 2025.

Until then, Ina and David Steiner will continue publishing e-commerce bites on a daily basis, just like they have for the past 26 years.

It's what they've always loved to do.

and now it means more than ever.

Not only does e-commerce bites serve as a reluctant symbol of free speech, but for the Steiners personally, it provides a welcome distraction from the cruelty of the outside world.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, aka the former, aka Devil Boy.

For more information about Swindled, you can visit spindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at Swindled Podcast.

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We do not trust you.

And I have never felt more justified.

Swindled is a completely independent production.

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That's it.

Thanks for listening.

Hi, this is Dr.

West, and I'm calling from Cleveland, Ohio.

Hello, my name is Chris from Toronto.

Hi, my name is,

let's say, John from Richmond, Virginia.

and I am a concerned citizen of a valued listener.

I work for these people, and they have more tools than you could imagine.

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There's no safe like simply safe.

Martha listens to her favorite band all the time.

In the car,

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She saved so much, she got a seat close enough to actually see and hear them.

Sort of.

You were made to scream from the front row.

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Expedia, made to travel.

Savings vary and subject to availability, blight-inclusive packages are at all protected.