Five years after a brazen, coordinated campaign of retaliatory harassment against a married couple who ran an independent online publication critical of eBay’s business practices, the e-commerce giant and its former top executives have agreed to pay $56 million in civil damages to close the high-profile case.
The victims, David and Ina Steiner, founded and operated EcommerceBytes, a website and industry newsletter that regularly published coverage scrutinizing eBay’s policies and corporate decisions. In 2019, that critical coverage drew a aggressive, unacceptable response from a cohort of then-current eBay executives, who orchestrated a months-long pattern of intimidation designed to silence the couple’s reporting.
Court records and federal investigation documents detail a series of disturbing, threatening acts carried out against the Steiners, who reside in Massachusetts. The group sent the couple unwanted, menacing packages: a costume mask coated in pig’s blood, a funeral wreath left at their home, and a copy of a book about coping with the death of a spouse, messages clearly intended to frighten the pair by implying harm could be coming. Beyond sending disturbing parcels, executives sent repeated harassing messages to the couple via the social media platform X, then known as Twitter. In one of the most alarming breaches, multiple members of the group traveled to the Steiners’ home and attempted to place a tracking device on their personal vehicle to monitor their movements.
Between 2022 and 2024, all seven former eBay executives implicated in the scheme pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges connected to the harassment, following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. In 2024, one lead FBI investigator on the case described the operation as an “unprecedented, relentless, and over-the-top harassment campaign,” a characterization that underscored the severity and audacity of the corporate-led intimidation. eBay itself was also criminally charged in the scheme, and reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ that required the company to pay a $3 million criminal fine.
The newly announced $56 million civil settlement resolves the separate civil suit the Steiners brought against eBay and the involved executives. Under the terms of the agreement, the bulk of the payment comes from eBay, which has also committed $6 million of the total sum to go to various nonprofit organizations. Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig, who stepped down from the company the same year the harassment took place, will personally contribute $1 million to the settlement. Court records show that in 2019, Wenig sent a text message to the company’s top communications executive that read “Take her down,” in reference to Ina Steiner.
A representative for Wenig clarified this week that earlier legal proceedings had established the text was meant to reference a public relations strategy to counter what the company claimed were factual errors in Ina Steiner’s reporting, not a directive for harassment. “No one should ever have been subjected to what the Steiners endured in 2019, and I’m saddened by it, especially because it occurred during my time as CEO of eBay. The harassment was deliberately done in secret,” Wenig said in a statement this week. According to the Steiners’ legal team, Wenig’s $1 million personal contribution will be donated to an unnamed nonprofit that works to protect First Amendment rights to free speech, and will be gifted in Ina Steiner’s name. The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free expression, is a central issue in the case, as the harassment was carried out to punish the couple for critical speech.
Christopher Murphy, lead counsel for the Steiners at Scalli Murphy Law PC, celebrated the settlement as a landmark moment for accountability. “We believe this resolution sends a clear message that corporations and their executives cannot engage in this type of misconduct without facing significant consequences,” Murphy said in a statement Tuesday.
eBay also issued an official acknowledgement of wrongdoing as part of the settlement announcement. “What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened,” the company said. eBay formally condemned the former employees who pleaded guilty to criminal charges that prompted the civil suit, and admitted that internal communications between Wenig and other former executives carried an “unprofessional tone.” The company added: “This agreement is consistent with our commitment to fairly compensate the Steiners and fulfills our efforts to make things right.”