Ex-eBay exec charged with harassing newsletter publishers pleads guilty
By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – A former eBay Inc safety government pleaded responsible on Thursday to collaborating in a marketing campaign to harass a Massachusetts couple who ran an internet publication that concerned sending them disturbing house deliveries like cockroaches and a funeral wreath.
David Harville, the corporate’s former director of world resiliency, pleaded responsible in Boston federal court docket to 5 conspiracy and stalking counts, changing into the final of seven ex-eBay staff charged within the case to confess wrongdoing.
Harville, 50, had been slated to face trial on Could 31 earlier than hanging a plea deal. His plea got here two weeks after Harville’s co-defendant, Jim Baugh, eBay’s former senior director of security and safety, likewise pleaded responsible.
The 2 males had been charged together with 5 different former eBay staff in 2020 with collaborating in an in depth marketing campaign to harass and intimidate the married couple in Natick, Massachusetts, behind the web publication EcommerceBytes.
They did so after two high executives, together with former Chief Govt Officer Devin Wenig, expressed frustration with the publication, which they noticed as essential of the corporate, in response to prosecutors and a lawsuit the couple, David and Ina Steiner, filed in opposition to eBay.
Wenig was not charged and has denied realizing in regards to the scheme. Settlement talks between eBay and the Steiners have been “unsuccessful,” the couple’s lawyer mentioned in a Saturday court docket submitting.
Prosecutors mentioned the Steiners in August 2019 started receiving nameless, harassing non-public messages on Twitter and undesirable and disturbing deliveries to their house that additionally included a bloody pig masks.
Prosecutors mentioned Harville traveled to Massachusetts with others for what Baugh referred to as an “op” to observe the couple and take a look at unsuccessfully to put in a GPS on their automobile.
Harville faces sentencing on Oct. 6 and faces 41 to 51 months in jail underneath federal sentencing tips, Assistant U.S. Lawyer Seth Kosto mentioned. Protection lawyer Peter Levitt mentioned he would argue for much less.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Modifying by Richard Chang)
