Still using eBay? Back in the day, the e-commerce platform was the Internet’s biggest buying and selling store, before Amazon came along and ate up much of its market. To this day, eBay is still in business and millions of people use it every day (even if you have to navigate the occasional scam along the way).
But today we’re not here to reminisce about old times, but to recount a bizarre and disgusting case of harassment by several former eBay employees, who went so far as to send live spiders and cockroaches, a bloody pig mask and even a funeral wreath to a couple who have told CBS News about the hell they went through.
A harassment campaign orchestrated by eBay’s former CEO
Ina and David Steiner are a married couple who have been running EcommerceBytes for more than 20 years. The website focuses on the world of e-commerce and has more than 600,000 readers, including executives from major companies in the industry. In one of her articles, written in April 2019, Ina Steiner discussed former eBay CEO Devin Wenig, where she detailed how much money the entrepreneur made annually.
Wenig, whose fragile ego must rival Elon Musk‘s, got pissed at the writer for that article and shared the post with some of his employees, including former eBay communications chief Steve Wymer. Wymer responded like a boot-licking lackey, prompting the rest of the employees present at the conversation to “crush” the writer. And what did the former eBay CEO say? “Take her down”. A wonderful person, yes.
A few months later, in August 2019, the Steiner nightmare began. First, they received lots and lots of strange emails and newsletters that they had never subscribed to, while also receiving all sorts of harassing messages on Twitter from anonymous people. A few days later, they received a voicemail message telling them that an order could not be placed in their name (placed by the harassers), which turned out to be a fetal pig.
But it didn’t end there. The stalkers sent a bloody pig mask from the movie Saw and boxes with live spiders and cockroaches to the couple; their neighbors received pornography in their name, and their house appeared on social networks as a place for flea market-type sales and sex parties.
The disgusting and terrifying icing on the cake was the sending of a book on “how to survive the loss of a spouse” addressed to David Steiner, accompanied by a funeral wreath that arrived within days. From harassment and intimidation, the former eBay employees went on to make direct death threats.
Even after reporting the incident to the police, who opened an investigation, and installing security cameras, the Steiner’s continued to receive packages and threats of all kinds for three weeks. The couple was so afraid that they went so far as to sleep in separate rooms to ensure that one could escape or call the police if someone broke into their home.
The turning point in the case came when David realized that one day he was followed by a van and a car. After tracing the van’s license plate, it became apparent that it had been rented by Veronica Zea, a former eBay employee. The FBI, which took over the case after this, eventually discovered that Zea and other eBay workers were conducting a “terror campaign” against the couple.
As of today, and after filing a civil lawsuit in Massachusetts against eBay and the employees involved, including its former managers, the Steiner’s are awaiting the results of the investigation into this abject case of harassment.
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