Two eBay employees plead guilty to terrorizing blogger couple in a bizarre harassment scheme that included delivering live spiders, funeral wreaths and a bloody pig mask to their home after they criticized the company

Prosecutors revealed an indictment against six former eBay employees, among them high-level executives, for threatening David and Ina Steiner , the founders of ECommerceBytes.com

Two former eBay employees have pleaded guilty to participating in a plot to terrorize a publisher and editor of an online newsletter that criticized the company by sending live spiders and other disturbing deliveries to their home.  

Stephanie Popp, 32, former senior manager of global intelligence, and Veronica Zea, 26, a contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and to tamper with witnesses on Thursday. 

The pair are among six former eBay employees charged in a bizarre harassment campaign targeting Massachusetts couple David and Ina Steiner, the founders of ECommerceBytes.com. 

Popp and Zea, both from San Jose, California, are scheduled to be sentenced in February. Three others are expected to plead guilty later this month.

Investigators said the couple was targeted after their newsletter published an article about a lawsuit filed by eBay accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers.  

Two members of the company's executive leadership team then orchestrated a three-part plot to go after the middle aged couple, by sending them a funeral wreath and a bloody pig Halloween mask, among other deliveries, federal prosecutors said.

The FBI in Boston released images showing some of the disturbing items that were allegedly sent by eBay staffers to the editor of an e-commerce newsletter as part of a twisted campaign of harassment, including a bloody pig mask and a book on grief 

Former eBay senior director of safety and security James Baugh, 45, and David Harville, 48, ex-director of global resiliency, are accused of leading the campaign.

They are also charged with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to commit witness tampering.

The other former eBay employees charged are identified in court documents as ; Brian Gilbert, 51, of San Jose, a former senior manager of special operations for eBay's global security team; and Stephanie Stockwell, 26, of Redwood City, California, former manager of eBay's Global Intelligence Center. 

The harassment first began in August 2019, when the couple say they started to receive a number of threatening emails and tweets.

Shortly afterwards, the Steiners received a package delivered to their front door which contained a mask of a bloody pig's head, which was followed by the delivery of a funeral wreath.

Though the Steiners website was obscure, it did have a significant following among eBay sellers, who often left snarky or personal comments about Wenig or other executives

United States District Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew E. Lelling (2-L) announces charges of conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and witness tampering against six ex-eBay executives

The strange packages continued to arrive over a period of several weeks, with the content of each growing increasingly bizarre. Fly larvae, spiders, roaches and a self-help book about coping with the loss of a spouse were also received by the couple.

After the bloody pig mask was delivered, Ina received a message on Twitter saying: 'DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????,' court documents show. 

The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband's name on them to their neighbor's house and took out an ad on Craigslist inviting 'singles, couples and swingers' to come over to the newsletter publisher's home to party each night.

They also planned to break into the couple's garage to install a GPS device on their car, and advertised things like yard sales at their address and encouraged strangers to knock on the door if the pair wasn't outside, officials said.

Joseph Bonavolonta, the FBI special agent leading the case, said the group was inspired by the movie Johnny Be Good, a 1988 sports comedy in which friends arranged a series of 'unwanted and distracting items and people' delivered to their football coach's home, including an elephant and a male stripper. 

As part of the second phase of the campaign, some of the defendants allegedly sent private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick. 

Court documents allege that Baugh, Gilbert, Popp and another eBay security employee planned these messages to become increasingly disturbing, culminating with 'doxxing' the victims by publishing their home address online. 

In September 2019, eBay fired six workers, among them high-ranking executives, after learning of the alleged plan to terrorize the blogger 

It is alleged that the eBay staffers intended then to have Gilbert, a former Santa Clara police captain, approach the victims with an offer to help stop the harassment in an effort to promote good will towards eBay and generate more favorable coverage in the newsletter. 

The third phase of the twisted plot allegedly involved secretly surveilling the victims in their home. 

An internal investigation was launched after eBay was notified by law enforcement in August 2019 of 'suspicious actions by its security personnel,' company officials wrote in a prepared statement. 

The employees were fired in September, the company said. 

The company's then-CEO Devin Wenig, who was stepped down in September.

Wenig said at the time that he was stepping down over differences with the board of directors.

According to the indictment, Steven Wymer, eBay's former public-relations chief allegedly sent a text to Wenig in April 2019 vowing to 'crush' the publisher of the newsletter. 

The text was sent after the newsletter published a story about Wenig's compensation, prosecutors said.  

EBay later said that the internal investigation found that, while Wenig's communications 'were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband.   

An email seeking comment were sent Friday to an attorney for Zea. An attorney for Popp declined to comment. 

The six former eBay workers charged in the case could each face up to 10 years if convicted of conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and tamper with witnesses.