Ebay Has to Pay $55.7 Million in Settlement for Its Unhinged Harassment Campaign

eBay 因其疯狂的骚扰行动需支付 5570 万美元和解金

A civil litigation case against eBay, filed by the founders of a Massachusetts-based news site that covers ecommerce, has just been settled. The gist of it: The company and former execs have to own up to—and pay up for—perhaps the most disturbing harassment campaign ever led by a giant tech company against its critics. 由一家报道电子商务的马萨诸塞州新闻网站创始人对 eBay 提起的民事诉讼案刚刚达成和解。其核心内容是：该公司及其前高管必须承认并赔偿这起或许是大型科技公司针对其批评者所发动的最令人不安的骚扰行动。

Back in 2020, six former eBay employees and one contractor were charged with participating in a horrifying campaign—featuring doxing, threats, and deliveries of live pests—against David and Ina Steiner, the husband-and-wife founders of the Massachusetts-based news site EcommerceBytes. The Steiners wrote about eBay regularly, often not in a flattering light. In 2021, the couple filed a civil suit; EBay later agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty to the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Massachusetts. 2020 年，六名前 eBay 员工和一名承包商被指控参与了一场骇人听闻的骚扰行动，针对马萨诸塞州新闻网站 EcommerceBytes 的创始人夫妇 David 和 Ina Steiner。骚扰手段包括人肉搜索、威胁以及寄送活体害虫。Steiner 夫妇经常撰写关于 eBay 的报道，且内容往往并不讨喜。2021 年，这对夫妇提起了民事诉讼；随后 eBay 同意向美国马萨诸塞区联邦检察官办公室支付 300 万美元的刑事罚款。

Now the civil litigation case just reached a final settlement. The Steiners will receive more than $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former CEO Devin Wenig, $500,000 from former eBay executive Wendy Jones, and $50,000 from former eBay executive Steve Wymer. 目前，该民事诉讼案已达成最终和解。Steiner 夫妇将从 eBay 获得超过 4615 万美元的赔偿，从前首席执行官 Devin Wenig 处获得 200 万美元，从前 eBay 高管 Wendy Jones 处获得 50 万美元，以及从前 eBay 高管 Steve Wymer 处获得 5 万美元。

EBay is also giving $6 million to charity, with an additional $1 million from Wenig going to a nonprofit that protects First Amendment rights. The company is required to issue a strongly worded statement condemning the actions of the former employees who were involved. eBay 还将向慈善机构捐赠 600 万美元，Wenig 另向一家保护第一修正案权利的非营利组织捐赠 100 万美元。该公司被要求发表一份措辞严厉的声明，谴责涉案前员工的行为。

Notably, the settlement contains no confidentiality provision, which means the Steiners can continue to speak out about the case. 值得注意的是，该和解协议不包含保密条款，这意味着 Steiner 夫妇可以继续公开谈论此案。

“From day one, that was a dealbreaker,” says Chris Murphy, an attorney for the Steiners at the personal injury firm Scalli Murphy Law in Everett, Massachusetts. “As journalists, and as victims, the Steiners were very clear that they wanted everyone to see and understand what eBay did to them. And from day one, they were ready to go to trial over it.” “从第一天起，这就是我们的底线，”马萨诸塞州埃弗雷特市 Scalli Murphy 律师事务所的 Steiner 夫妇代理律师 Chris Murphy 表示。“作为记者和受害者，Steiner 夫妇非常明确地表示，他们希望所有人都能看到并了解 eBay 对他们做了什么。从第一天起，他们就做好了为此进行审判的准备。”

“It’s a relief in some sense that we have some finality,” David Steiner said in an interview with WIRED. “But I think that it’s going to take a while to really see what this means in the bigger context of a settlement, versus having gone to trial. We were really adamant that this type of behavior by a Fortune 500 corporation didn’t go unchecked.” “在某种意义上，事情终于有了定论，这是一种解脱，”David Steiner 在接受《连线》(WIRED) 采访时说。“但我认为，要真正理解这在和解与审判的更大背景下意味着什么，还需要一段时间。我们非常坚持一点，那就是《财富》500 强企业的这种行为不能不受惩罚。”

Ina Steiner underscored that the couple ultimately pursued a civil suit because they wanted to better understand the kind of culture that precipitated this harassment campaign—and that in filing the civil suit, they gained access to 68,000 documents they would not have otherwise seen. “We were often in the dark during the federal investigation, and we were told very little as victims,” she said. Ina Steiner 强调，他们夫妇最终提起民事诉讼是因为想更好地了解导致这场骚扰行动的企业文化——通过提起民事诉讼，他们获得了 6.8 万份原本无法看到的内部文件。“在联邦调查期间，我们常常被蒙在鼓里，作为受害者，我们获知的信息非常有限，”她说。

Spokespersons for eBay referred WIRED to a statement published online, in which the company extended its “deepest apologies” to the Steiners, condemned the employees who “perpetrated and pled guilty to criminal charges for the misconduct against Ina and David Steiner,” and acknowledged “the unprofessional tone in internal communications demonstrated, to different degrees and number, by Mr. Wenig, Mr. Wymer, and Ms. Jones.” The company emphasized that new leadership is now in charge, and that the incidents from 2019 are “not representative of eBay’s culture or thousands of employees around the world today.” eBay 发言人向《连线》指引了一份在线发布的声明。声明中，公司向 Steiner 夫妇表达了“最深切的歉意”，谴责了那些“针对 Ina 和 David Steiner 实施不当行为并对刑事指控认罪”的员工，并承认“Wenig 先生、Wymer 先生和 Jones 女士在内部沟通中表现出的不专业语气”。公司强调，目前已有新的领导层接管，2019 年发生的事件“并不代表 eBay 的企业文化，也不代表当今全球数千名员工的形象”。

According to the initial criminal complaints, the harassment campaign led by eBay executives and contractors unfolded over a period of two months in the summer 2019. It began with anonymous, threatening Twitter DMs to the Steiners, then quickly escalated to deliveries to the couple’s home. These deliveries included a bloody pig mask, pornography, a package of fly larvae and live spiders, and another package containing live cockroaches. Other deliveries were themed around death, including a copy of a book on grieving a spouse and a funeral wreath from a local florist. All throughout, the anonymous Twitter account continued to send harassing messages. As text messages would later reveal in court documents, those DMs and deliveries were concocted and sent by the defendants. 根据最初的刑事起诉书，由 eBay 高管和承包商领导的骚扰行动发生在 2019 年夏季，持续了两个月。行动始于向 Steiner 夫妇发送匿名的威胁性 Twitter 私信，随后迅速升级为向其家中寄送物品。这些物品包括血淋淋的猪面具、色情制品、一包蝇蛆和活蜘蛛，以及另一包活蟑螂。其他寄送物品则以死亡为主题，包括一本关于悼念配偶的书和来自当地花店的葬礼花圈。在此期间，那个匿名 Twitter 账号持续发送骚扰信息。正如后来法庭文件中的短信记录所揭示的那样，这些私信和寄送物品均由被告策划并实施。

Eventually, the eBay workers turned to in-person surveillance, tailing the couple in a rented Dodge Caravan. They also listed classified ads on Craigslist for a swinger party, a threesome, a block sale, and an estate sale, all pointing to the Steiner’s home address. At one point, an emergency plumber was sent to the home. Once the couple alerted the Natick police department, who alerted the feds, the harassers eased up their campaign and scrambled to cover up their actions. While Wenig has maintained that he had no knowledge of the specific actions that group had taken on behalf of eBay, he allegedly gave the initial order to “take her down,” referring to Ina Steiner, to former eBay chief communications officer Steve Wymer. 最终，这些 eBay 员工转为线下监视，驾驶一辆租来的道奇 Caravan 跟踪这对夫妇。他们还在 Craigslist 上发布了换妻派对、三人行、街区甩卖和遗产拍卖的分类广告，所有地址都指向 Steiner 的家。有一次，他们甚至叫了一名紧急管道工上门。当这对夫妇向内蒂克警察局报警并由警方通知联邦调查局后，骚扰者才收敛并匆忙掩盖罪行。尽管 Wenig 一直坚称自己对该小组以 eBay 名义采取的具体行动毫不知情，但他据称曾向 eBay 前首席通讯官 Steve Wymer 下达了“搞定她”（指 Ina Steiner）的最初指令。

One subtlety of the Steiner settlement involves a law around punitive damages. In Massachusetts, punitive damages are typically not permitted in a standard personal injury or civil harassment case such as this one. The Steiners’s lawyers were able to successfully argue that because eBay is domiciled in California, where damages are allowed for personal civil harassment, these damages should be allowed in this particular case. Steiner 和解案的一个微妙之处涉及惩罚性赔偿的相关法律。在马萨诸塞州，此类标准的人身伤害或民事骚扰案件通常不允许惩罚性赔偿。Steiner 夫妇的律师成功辩称，由于 eBay 的注册地在加利福尼亚州，而该州允许对个人民事骚扰进行赔偿，因此在本案中也应允许此类赔偿。

Murphy says that he believes it’s the first time this has been allowed in this kind of case in the state of Massachusetts, and that it sets a new precedent for harassment campaigns that originate from other states. Murphy 表示，他认为这是马萨诸塞州此类案件中首次获准进行此类赔偿，这为源自其他州的骚扰行动树立了新的先例。

The Steiners are still operating EcommerceBytes out of their longtime home in Natick, Massachusetts. Murphy made a point to say that they remained in their home throughout the harassment campaign and the subsequent pandemic, enhancing their home security systems and sleeping in separate rooms in case one of them was physically assaulted during the night. Ina Steiner’s most recent post, about the settlement itself, was published to the news site just after 9pm local time last night—the first outlet to break the news. Steiner 夫妇目前仍在马萨诸塞州内蒂克的家中运营 EcommerceBytes。Murphy 特别提到，在整个骚扰行动和随后的疫情期间，他们一直住在家里，加强了家庭安保系统，并分房睡觉，以防其中一人在夜间遭到人身攻击。Ina Steiner 关于此次和解的最新文章于昨晚当地时间 9 点后发布在该新闻网站上——这是首家发布此消息的媒体。