Ex-eBay employees sentenced for harassing couple behind newsletter

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Two former eBay Inc (NASDAQ:) security employees were sentenced to prison and home confinement on Tuesday for their roles in a cyberstalking campaign that targeted a Massachusetts couple whose online newsletter was viewed as critical of the e-commerce company.

Stephanie Popp, 34, was sentenced to one year in prison while Stephanie Stockwell, 28, was ordered to serve a year of home confinement for participating in an extensive campaign in 2019 that involved sending the couple cockroaches, fly larvae and a bloody Halloween pig mask.

They were sentenced by U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston after pleading guilty in 2020 to cyberstalking-related charges and admitting they facilitated a scheme to intimidate the couple while at the Silicon Valley e-commerce company.

Defense lawyers had no immediate comment.

They are among seven former eBay workers who have admitted wrongdoing over a scheme that targeted David and Ina Steiner, a married couple in Natick, Massachusetts, who produce the newsletter EcommerceBytes.

Prosecutors said senior executives, including then-Chief Executive Officer Devin Wenig deemed the newsletter critical of eBay, in mid-2019, and a senior member of its security team, Jim Baugh, implemented a plan to harass and intimidate them.

Prosecutors said Popp, eBay’s senior manager of global intelligence, that August sent Ina Steiner a series of anonymous Twitter messages criticizing the newsletter’s coverage and at times threatening violence.

She and Stockwell, the manager of eBay’s global intelligence center were involved in sending gross and disturbing and threatening packages to the Steiners’ home, which also included spiders, a funeral wreath and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, prosecutors said.

Popp also traveled to Massachusetts to help Baugh and others surveil their home. Baugh was sentenced last month to 57 months in prison.

Wenig, a former Thomson Reuters (NYSE:) executive who stepped down as eBay’s CEO in September 2019, was not charged. A spokesman has said Wenig had “absolutely zero knowledge” of the actions the employees undertook.

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