eBay just wrote a $55.7 million check to make a corporate stalking campaign go away.
On July 27, eBay and three former executives - ex-CEO Devin Wenig, former senior vice president Wendy Jones, and former chief communications officer Steve Wymer - agreed to pay $55.7 million to settle a lawsuit from Ina and David Steiner, founders of the ecommerce news site EcommerceBytes. In 2019, members of eBay's security team allegedly targeted the couple with live cockroaches, a fetal pig, a bloody Halloween mask, and other disturbing deliveries after EcommerceBytes published critical coverage of Wenig's pay and his handling of eBay's litigation against Amazon. The team also allegedly traveled from California to Massachusetts, followed the Steiners in a rented van, and attempted to install a GPS tracker on their car - it's unclear from court records whether the device was actually placed. Of the total, $48.7 million goes to the Steiners, with the remainder split among eBay, Wenig, and nonprofits including a First Amendment rights group.
The settlement carries no confidentiality clause, a deliberate choice by the Steiners, who wanted the payout to double as a warning to other companies tempted to intimidate reporters. It also closes out six years of litigation that already produced guilty pleas from seven former eBay employees and contractors, plus a $3 million federal penalty against eBay in 2024.
EcommerceBytes never stopped publishing through any of it, and Ina Steiner got to break the news of her own settlement - either poetic justice or the least surprising ending in local journalism.