eBay and three former executives will pay $55.7 million as a part of a settlement with a Massachusetts couple focused with a weird harassment and cyberstalking marketing campaign in 2019, as reported earlier by CNBC. The settlement will resolve a prolonged authorized saga that exposed how eBay’s former executives sent live insectsa bloody pig masks, a funeral wreath, and different unusual objects to David and Ina Steiner over their e-newsletter’s protection of eBay.
The Steiners, who function the EcommerceBytes e-newsletter, sued eBay and its former executives — together with ex-CEO Devin Wenig — in 2021. The lawsuit accused the company and its executives of launching a coordinated effort to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence” the Steiners in an try and “stifle” their eBay-related reporting.
“As we have now lengthy acknowledged, what the Steiners had been subjected to by former eBay workers in 2019 was incorrect, reprehensible and may by no means have occurred,” eBay says in a statement on its web site. “We condemn, within the strongest phrases attainable, the workers who perpetrated and pled responsible to legal expenses for the misconduct in opposition to Ina and David Steiner.”
The $55.7 million settlement will embody $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from Wenig, $500,000 from former international operations SVP Wendy Jones, and $50,000 from former chief communications officer Steve Wymer. eBay will even donate $6 million to nonprofit organizations.
