The six staff members have since been fired from the company but have recently been charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking after terrorising the middle-aged couple by sending items to their house.
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After the couple, an editor and publisher of a newspaper left negative reviews ofeBay six executive employees decided to take matters into their own hands and give the couple a little scare, which quickly turned into a case of seriousharassment.
An hour after a criticising article was published two of the executives exchanged texts stating:
(Victim 1) is out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down..now is the time.
The employees charged included the senior manager of global intelligence, senior manager of special operations for eBay’s Global Security Team, manager of eBay’s Global Intelligence Centre and an intelligence analyst in the Global Intelligence Centre. All staff involved have since been fired after setting out to destroy the lives of their critics.
The employees had sent some nasty packages to the couple's home including a bloodies mask of a pig's head, a box of cockroaches, and a box of spiders. They also sent porn to the couple's neighbours addressed from the couple's house. According to the court documents, when the victims received the pigs mask they were also sent a message saying:
DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????
the life-ruining tactics increased when the eBay employees started to create fake swingers ads directing strangers to the journalists' home at all hours of the day and night. They also created fake profiles online to harass the couple and send them negative comments on their newspaper.
The stalking hit an all-time high when two employees travelled to the couple's home under the guise of a 'business conference' only to stake out their house and place a GPS tracker on their car.
After realising they were being followed the couple laid a complaint with the police who found the car following them was registered to one of the eBay workers. During the police investigation, all six employees involved lied to both the cops and their lawyers about their involvement in the stalking. US Attorney Andrew Lelling stated:
eBay executives were not merely unhappy with the couple’s coverage — they were enraged. The result, as alleged in the complaint, is a systematic campaign fuelled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company to emotionally and psychologically terrorise this middle-aged couple in Natick with the goal of deterring them from writing bad things online about eBay. This was a determined, systematic effort by senior employees of a major company to destroy the lives of a couple.
eBayhas also commented on the case stating that they ‘took these allegations very seriously from the outset.’
All six of those involved have now been charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses and could each face up to five years in jail or a $250,000 fine.
