Online newsletter ecommercebytes published a story under that headline the same day with the same verbatim language referring to Wenig.
Last year, EBay hired a consultant that suggested the company promote favorable online content about EBay with a goal of pushing the online newsletter down in search results, a common form of reputation management. But another campaign unfolded simultaneously that directly targeted the couple in a harassing way, according to the indictment.
EBay said in a statement that “neither the company nor any current EBay employee was indicted” and that it “was notified by law enforcement in August 2019 of suspicious actions by its security personnel toward a blogger, who writes about the company, and her husband” and “immediately launched a comprehensive investigation.” As a result, eBay said, it “terminated all involved employees, including the company’s former chief communications officer, in September 2019.”
EBay said it had refrained from discussing the case earlier to avoid compromising the government’s investigation.
Baugh, 45, was EBay’s senior director of safety and security. Harville, 48, was the company’s director of global resiliency and, according to his LinkedIn profile, a former captain in the Army and program coordinator for the Justice Department. Both have been arrested. Neither immediately responded to LinkedIn messages seeking comment on the charges.
The U.S. says Baugh, Harville and a third associate went to the couple’s home in the Boston suburb of Natick in August planning to put the GPS device on their sport utility vehicle but found it locked in the garage. They monitored local police radio communications during the attempt, according to the FBI affidavit.
The alleged harassment squad also sent pornographic magazines to the victim’s neighbors in packages that implicated the newsletter, the FBI says.
In meetings with staff, Baugh “referred to having executive support for these actions” and stressed that the campaign be kept secret, the FBI said. In one meeting, the FBI said, he showed a photo of what he called a Samoan gang and claimed he would send the gang to the publisher’s home if the harassment didn’t silence the newsletter.
“We have not seen something like this before,” Andrew Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, said at a news conference.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.