eBay agrees $55.7m settlement over Steiner cyberstalking campaign

eBay and respective erstwhile executives person agreed to wage $55.7m to settee a civilian suit brought by Ina and David Steiner implicit a 2019 harassment campaign.

Operators of the EcommerceBytes quality site, the Steiners were targeted by erstwhile eBay employees successful what their lawyers astatine Scalli Murphy Law described arsenic a "terror campaign" intended to halt their reporting.

The statement concludes much than six years of transgression and civilian proceedings.

The Steiners filed their lawsuit successful Boston national tribunal successful 2021, aft transgression prosecutions involving respective erstwhile eBay employees implicit a strategy that included sending the mates cockroaches, alert larvae and a bloody Halloween pig mask.

"We judge this solution sends a wide connection that corporations and their executives cannot prosecute successful this benignant of misconduct without facing important consequences", Christopher Murphy, the Steiners' attorney, said successful a statement.

Under the settlement, the Steiners are to person $48.7m successful full compensation.

Of that amount, eBay volition wage $46.15m.

Former main enforcement Devin Wenig volition wage $2m, erstwhile enforcement Wendy Jones volition wage $500,000, and erstwhile enforcement Steve Wymer volition wage $50,000.

In summation to the nonstop compensation, eBay has agreed to supply $6m successful charitable donations to non-profit groups.

Wenig volition besides marque a abstracted $1m donation to an organisation that supports First Amendment rights, with the acquisition to beryllium made successful Ina Steiner's name.

The statement besides required eBay to contented a nationalist connection covering the behaviour of Wenig, Wymer and Jones successful transportation with events successful Natick, Massachusetts, and the wider civilization astatine the institution successful 2019.

In a statement, eBay said: "As we person agelong stated, what the Steiners were subjected to by erstwhile eBay employees successful 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should ne'er person happened.

"We condemn, successful the strongest presumption possible, the employees who perpetrated and pled blameworthy to transgression charges for the misconduct against Ina and David Steiner. We besides admit the unprofessional code successful interior communications demonstrated, to antithetic degrees and number, by Mr Wenig, Mr Wymer, and Ms Jones."

The colony does not see a confidentiality clause, allowing the Steiners to talk publically astir the lawsuit and the outcome.

Separate settlements were besides reached with different eBay employees named arsenic defendants successful the civilian case.

All pleaded blameworthy to charges linked to the harassment campaign.

The statement comes amid a play of wider firm developments astatine eBay.