You thought PayPal was bad? eBay security team harassed and cyberstalked a newletter-writing couple because they were critical of the company

[Dan Druff]

This story seems like something out of a bad "Law & Order" episode, but it's real life.

David and Ina Steiner, a couple in their 50s from Natick, Massachusetts, have a long-running eCommerce newsletter/website, which dates back to the 1990s. When the newsletter became increasingly critical of eBay in the mid-late 2010s, eBay's security team decided it was time to take action to silence them.



However, they didn't receive the ominous legal threats you'd expect. Instead, members of the team engaged in a campaign of cyberstalking, harassment, threats, phony ads with their address, and merchandise (including dead animals) shipped to their home.

Here's the overall story: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/...ry-first-time/

Anonymous and profane demands that the couple stop reporting about eBay; the publication of their home address on Twitter and threats to visit them there; the delivery of live insects and a funeral wreath; Craigslist posts inviting all comers to sexual encounters at their home; a black van that followed the husband as he drove around Natick, and so much more.

The downfall of the harassers was their overaggression with physically following David Steiner. After doing this several times in rented vans, Steiner finally got a clear picture of a license plate, and they traced it back to an eBay employee who had recently flown into Boston for the duration of the harassment period.

Philip Cooke, the former senior manager of Security Operations for eBay’s Global Security Team, was sentenced to 18 months in prison. It was the first sentencing of anyone involved in the case. Cooke was the leader of the harassment scheme, but was allegedly doing so at the direction of his boss, James Baugh, who is awaiting trial.

Several others have pled guilty, and will be sentenced shortly. Surprisingly, three of the seven people arrested and convicted were young women.

There's also a pending civil suit over this. eBay looks particularly bad because they actually promoted Cooke after their investigation of the matter, despite apparent knowledge of his role in the scheme. Cooke was also a former Santa Clara police officer.

Given the guilty pleas in the criminal case, the high level figures involved, and the promotion of Cooke, I predict a nice settlement for the couple. They deserve it.

Do you hate eBay even more now?

[Dan Druff]

More info about the case, including text messages between Cooke, his boss James Baugh, and another former Santa Clara cop named Brian Gilbert:

https://www.svvoice.com/former-santa...nt-conspiracy/

[Dan Druff]

Here's the official statement from the DOJ regarding Cooke's guilty plea:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/f...lking-campaign

It is alleged that in August 2019, the defendants executed a three-part harassment campaign against the Natick couple. Among other things, several of the defendants ordered anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, including a preserved fetal pig, a bloody pig Halloween mask and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse.

As part of the second phase of the campaign, some of the defendants allegedly sent private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick. The charging documents allege that Cooke, Baugh, Gilbert, and Popp planned these messages to become increasingly disturbing, culminating with “doxing” the victims (i.e., publishing their home address). It is alleged that the same group intended then to have Gilbert, a former Santa Clara police captain, approach the victims with an offer to help stop the harassment that the defendants were secretly causing, in an effort to promote good will towards eBay.

Interesting. So this Gilbert guy was supposed to swoop in like a hero, pretending to be representing eBay and on their side, who would then "stop" the harassers, who in reality were his accomplices. Apparently the hope was that the couple would be fooled by this, and feel better about eBay as a company for helping them.

Dumb plan. Pretty sure they'd have seen right through it, if it got to this stage. Sounds like this whole thing was put together by morons. They'd have been better off just quietly telling the couple that eBay is behind it, and that nobody will ever believe them if they attempt to report it. That would have been more effective. Also, LOL at repeatedly following David Steiner, even after it became clear Steiner was trying to get pictures of the plates.

[Dan Druff]

Here's the most detailed article I found so far. It's in the NY Times.

It explains a lot more, and much of this info came from one of the female conspirators, Veronica Zea, who is 26.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/t...g-scandal.html


Two high level eBay executives, CEO Devin Wenig and communications director Steve Wymer, were apparently infuriated with the Steiners, for reasons which aren't clear. For some reason their small newsletter was really irritating the eBay top brass, despite not doing anything particularly offensive besides being critical.

This led the eBay security team to erroneously believe that a Twitter troll named "Fidomaster", who routinely bashed eBay, was in cahoots with the Steiners to make the company look bad. Thus, a very clumsy plan was born to figure out Fidomaster's identity, and harass both him and the Steiners into submission. However, Fidomaster never took the bait (they tried to trick him into appearing at a hotel to get a "thumb drive which is incriminating against eBay executives"), and they instead just went forward with harassing the Steiners instead, figuring he was closely associated with them anyway.

Apparently comms director Wymer wrote at one point, "Ms. Steiner and Fidomaster have seemingly dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us. I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it must be explored. Whatever. It. Takes."

At this point, Wymer and Wenig have not been charged, but they're being sued.

James Baugh decided to pattern the harassment of the Steiners after the 1988 movie "Johnny Be Good", which featured scenes of a football coach enduring various forms of harassing deliveries sent to his house. Baugh was apparently obsessed with movies, and required employees to repeatedly watch clips of various films which he felt were relevant to their experiences at the company, or to their loyalty. What a psycho.

Read the NY Times article. It's a very interesting story.

[Dan Druff]

One of the nastier females in the scheme was Stephanie Popp, who is 32.

Popp is said to have created a fake account on Twitter of a scary Samoan dude, who started threatening Ina Steiner, claiming that her articles were ruining his sales. Popp wrote at one point, "I guess im goin to have to get ur attention another way bitch…"

After Steiner received a bloody pig's head in the mail, Popp wrote (as the Samoan dude), "DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW?"

Popp also is said to have written, "wen u hurt our bizness u hurt our familys… Ppl will do ANYTHING 2 protect family!!!!", implying that this badass Samoan dude was going to harm them for what they were writing.

What a fucking cunt. She pled guilty, and is awaiting sentencing. She appears to be highly involved in the scheme, working alongside Baugh and Cooke.

Veronica Zea, who cooperated with the NY Times, of course paints herself as almost another victim, afraid to say no to her evil superiors However, it appears Zea went to Boston several times to help harass the Steiners, and she was the driver on some of the occasions when they were being followed. The rental car was in her name. I do believe she was the low man (er, woman) on this harassment totem pole, but she willingly engaged in fucking with this couple. I'm guessing she might get probation, though. I hope that Popp bitch gets real jail time, and same with that psycho James Baugh.

Too bad the two executives seem to have skated free. Par for the course.

[Walter Sobchak]

Ebay has always sucked. Fuck ebay.

Agree the executives should suffer consequences for this too.

[splitthis]

I cancelled PayPal due to their unwanted sociopolitical views, they will fall. Counter cancel is hugeeeeeeeee.

[BCR]

Are they not the luckiest people alive? I can’t imagine the settlement they are looking at. To be harassed for a prolonged period by pockets that deep is the stone cold nuts I’d imagine. Literally physically followed by eBay nerds? Garrett had to get mowed down to paid. These people had some nerds harassing them. These people are luckier than those George Floyd relatives who hadn’t returned his calls in 5 years. If you’re going to get cyberstalked, I have to imagine there are few better options than Ebay doing it.

I already assumed eBay were scum. This doesn’t surprise me.

[NickyPipes]

Brother do you understand what would happen to the nerds and virgins at eBay if they tried this on Nicky Pipes?

There’s a reason they leave me alone folks

[Dan Druff]

I found some more info regarding the sentencing recommendations of 2 of the three female defendants.

It appears that Stephanie Popp did some of the nastiest stuff in this whole scheme. She apparently was the one behind the Twitter and Craigslist stuff, including the threats and the sexual ads posted with the Steiners' home address. It also looks like she might have been the one arranging a lot of the harassing deliveries.

When they pled guilty, prosecutors agreed to recommend sentences of 41 months for Popp, and 30 months for Veronica Zea, the woman who cooperated with the NY Times article, portraying herself as a naive recent college grad.

Given that Philip Cooke, who seems to have been second-in-command in the scheme under James Baugh, only got a 30 month recommended sentence (and was ultimately given 18 months), it's interesting that Popp got a higher recommended sentence, and Zea got the same as Cooke's.

This says two things to me. It shows that Popp was probably the worst one of the bunch, and likely was the most active perpetrator. It also shows that Zea wasn't the innocent child she portrays herself to be, if she is getting the same recommended sentence as Cooke did.

So Popp will likely get at least 2 years behind bars, and possibly more. I also think Zea may not get probation like I first guessed, and will probably get something like 12-18 months.

When it's all said and done, Baugh, who refused a guilty plea, will probably spend the most time in prison for this.

Of course, a lot of these people were morons, so it wasn't particularly difficult to trace it all back to them. Imagine trying to stalk someone with a rental car in your own name, noticing they're trying to get pictures of the car, and still continuing to aggressively follow them. Not the brightest bulbs.

It's also LOL that they thought they were so clever paying for the 4am pizza deliveries with a prepaid gift card, but didn't bother to think of buying the gift card in Boston instead of San Jose. So they traced the purchase of the gift cards to a physical transaction 3000 miels away -- and very close to eBay headquarters -- and it didn't take a genius to connect the dots.

So many criminals are morons.

DOJ statement about Popp and Zea: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/t...rgeting-natick

More info: https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2020/...uilty-in-plot/

[Dan Druff]

I found another DOJ release which sheds even more light. Apparently Stephanie Popp had assistance from former police officer Brian Gilbert in constructing the Twitter messages.

Also, Stephanie Stockwell, the third young woman involved, did some of the ordering of the harassing deliveries, and also was ready with a cover story for Baugh, Zea, and seventh defendant David Harville. If Baugh, Zea, and/or Harville were stopped by police in the course of their harassment, Stockwell was ready to call in a cover story to police that they were investigating the couple for harassing eBay executives. Stockwell allegedly prepared false documents to present to police in case this happened.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/t...rgeting-nati-0

In connection with his plea today, Gilbert admitted to drafting threatening Twitter messages for Popp to send and planning the surveillance trip with various co-defendants. Gilbert also proposed bringing a dossier of documents to the Natick Police Department (NPD) – whom the victims had involved – that would make the victims “look crazy” and contacting the victims to offer help with the threatening messages that the defendants had sent. Lastly, Gilbert made false statements to the NPD about Zea and Harville’s reason for being in Boston.

Stockwell admitted to, at Baugh’s direction, purchasing a laptop for use in harassing the victims, and using an anonymous email account to order online live spiders and a prepaid debit card to purchase a late-night pizza delivery to the victims’ home. Stockwell also prepared an eBay “Person of Interest” report for the Bay Area—a fictions list of potential suspects to provide to the NPD to deflect the police from suspecting that eBay employees were actually harassing the victims.

It's also alleged that Harville and Baugh planned to put a GPS tracking device on Steiner's car, but found it garaged and couldn't do so. Instead, they had planned to break into the garage late at night, and install the device. However, the breakin never ended up happening. Presumably the device was to lead eBay to Fidomaster, who likely had nothing to do with the Steiners in reality, once again highlighting how stupid all of these criminals were.

Stockwell pled guilty, Harville and Baugh refused to do so.

Looks like the ones who pled guilty will be sentenced in late September, aside from Cooke who was already given 18 months.

[jsearles22]

Not sure how we are this deep in the thread without Druff saying how many millions these people deserve?

[David USF]

This is definitely movie material. Paging Steven Spielberg....

[Sanlmar]

Venmo and PayPal (eBay) were always faggot. Never used and never will. Don’t care that folks got fucked. Shoulda known better.

Square (SQ) & it’s Cash App is gonna be a trillion dollar company. Rocket ship

[simpdog]

Paypal was cool back in the day when you could use it for sportsbetting/poker.

IMO after that ship sailed they were forced to sell out to stay in business.

[Sanlmar]

Some of the funniest stories I have ever read revolve around Venmo …

Here’s a HOF Venmo thread. Literary greatness. Click tweet and follow.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/1420191058395340800

[Sanlmar]

From 2016 in the Regarding Young Curacao’s $40 thread
make threads great again


not just being fashionable

Got a "Notice of Class Action Settlement" regarding PayPal today. Swore I would never use that POS. I guess back in the day of Neteller and all that shit I went to the dark side. Keep my fucking money. Watching eBay dying past couple of days fills my dark heart with gladness.

[Sanlmar]

eBay CEO Meg Whitman ran for Gov of California. People loved their shit

[BCR]

eBay CEO Meg Whitman ran for Gov of California. People loved their shit

I never bid on an auction in my life with the exception of tickets to events back when buying physical tickets and having the time to have them mailed was a thing. Even then, I usually looked for the best Buy It now option. I’m not an extravagant person, but I’m a seat snob. I don’t want to go to anything if I’m not in first row behind dugout or front 3 rows for concert. I’m at maybe 5-10 of either in a year, and why bother?


It becomes I’d rather watch a sporting event on tv thing. Football is exception where anywhere high 20-20 gives better view of action, but NFL games are poor experience in general. People who can’t hold their alcohol drinking excessively and obnoxious barfing in the aisles and picking on some opposing fan

I have to think the rise of stubhub and seat geek and the myriad of other sites where people can sell their instant download tickets for any event put a dent into a pretty large segment of their business. I haven’t opened the site in probably close to a decade.

[BCR]

Some of the funniest stories I have ever read revolve around Venmo …

Here’s a HOF Venmo thread. Literary greatness. Click tweet and follow.

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/1420191058395340800

I want to be friends with this dude. Quoting for tine or others to catch it and read in case they skimmed thread as I almost did. It truly is literary greatness. Yours in love and commerce.