Brian Gilbert, 56, of San Jose, Calif., former Senior Manager of Special Operations for eBay’s Global Security Team, was sentenced to time served, one year of supervised release with the special condition that he have no contact with either of the victims in the case and a $20,000 fine
Jim Baugh, 47, of San Jose, Calif., eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, was sentenced to 57 months in prison
David Harville, 50, of Las Vegas, Nev., former Director of Global Resiliency, was sentenced to 24 months in prison
Stephanie Popp, 34, of Louisville, Ky., former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to 12 months in prison
Philip Cooke, 56, of San Jose, Calif., a former Senior Manager of Security Operations, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and 12 months of home confinement
Stephanie Stockwell, 28, of Redwood City, Calif., a former Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to one year in home confinement
Veronica Zea, 28, of San Jose, Calif., a contract intelligence analyst, was sentenced to one year in home confinement
There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.
"You take care of it." means "Murder him and dump the body into a building foundation."
"I don't see any problems." can mean "The ambush will happen at the scheduled time. Vinnie will clean up the bodies."
etc.
You'll also see a lot of politicians using "dog whistle" statements, that are interpreted by listeners to mean something entirely different from the stated words.
I'm not a lawyer, but isn't RICO meant to give a way to prosecute those who are at the top of organizations that have people committing crimes like this?
Cush consulting jobs after the fact. You don’t burn your social network unless the alternate is serious jail time. Given the slaps on the wrists described, clearly the after conviction pay day is more valuable.
“ The seven members of eBay’s security team were all criminally charged and sentenced to prison, home confinement or time served.
Other executives went on to other corporate jobs. Wymer and Wenig left eBay in September 2019, before the charges were filed. The following year, Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.
The Steiners sued the trio and other former executives along with the company in the case that led to the $56mn payout. Under the terms of the settlement, Wenig agreed to pay $2mn, Jones must contribute $500,000 and Wymer $50,000, according to the pair’s lawyers.”
And on the other hand, let's see how the C-suite made out:
Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.
(These were the Chief Communication Officer, CEO, and SVP for Global Operations, respectively)
> Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley
Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley lists its corporate donors as including Alliance Roofing · Amgen Foundation · Applied Materials · ASML · Comcast · Deloitte · EY · First Tech Federal Credit Union · Fremont Bank Foundation · Groundworks · Microsoft · NetApp · Peninsula Building Materials (PBM) · Project Learn / Panda Cares · Rite Aid Healthy Futures. If you work at or with any of these, flag this reporting to them.
The organization also appears to work with the City of San Jose and the Morgan Hill school district. (An abusive alleged excon running a kids’ charity is absurd to the point of being hilarious. Whoever was supposed to vet him for hiring should also find a new calling.)
I adore our local boys and girls club, our kids are there every weekday and they adore it too. We have donated a little bit of money monthly for almost a decade. I do not love the big money vanity donors but they are what make the place tick.
This is another level… I would be so angry if this clown were running our metro area. I feel obligated to write letters to all of those donors even though we are on the other coast.
> our kids are there every weekday and they adore it too. We have donated a little bit of money monthly for almost a decade
Write to the national organization. Like, this guy is credibly accused of—and has settled claims around—seriously abusive behavior. He should not be around kids.
Simple, one page: I am a donor and a parent who trusts their kids to your organization. I saw this reporting and was shocked.
I assume this has been investigated but it's difficult to believe this stopped at one pair of critics. There are plenty of people online critical of eBay. Were they running similar campaigns on anyone else?
> Seven members of eBay’s security team, including former police captains, “worked together to harass and intimidate the Steiners”, according to prosecutors.
I hope someone's looking into the careers of the "former police captains" here. Again, difficult to believe they just woke up one day and decided to fly cross-country to vandalize someone's house with no prior history of intimidation.
From the facts that came out at his trial [1], it seems like Baugh, the guy who ran the operation, was basically feral. At one point during his cross-country trip to harass these people, he was also trying to organize a blackmail campaign (with eBay personnel and resources) against a prosecutor in Arkansas who was charging his father with something? [2]
Scott Adams [0], who recently passed away, had a great line on human behavior (paraphrased):
Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly.
For another example, the Google case where it was exposed how many nefarious activities they were up to around auction bidding.
In one of my college courses, 100% of my fellow students cheated, including me. This is when I learned that virtually every person is deep down a liar and a cheat if they think they won't face consequences and it's in their benefit, and any public facade of virtue that people put up, common in this industry, is a manipulation strategy that is just more cheating, although of a different kind.
Side note but did anyone here tried to sell stuff on eBay ?
Their pricing are insane, they take a cut on your product price, but also on the delivery method and even on the taxes !
It amounts to about 13% of total price, including delivery and taxes.
It looks absolutely insane to me, but some people seem to defend it.
To put some perspective, here in France we have an extremely profitable competitor called Leboncoin, it's crushing eBay shares in the country, and they take only 5% cut on the product price.
Too expensive for things you can sell for cash on one of the dumb local marketplaces or on Craigslist.
Super niche stuff you need to be able to advertise to Timbuktu & Japan & LA & NY in hopes of finding a single buyer… fine take your 15%.
Great place to buy new stuff w/o enriching Bezos. Filter Buy It Now + Lowest Price First & hope they’ve fixed the “list a 99 cent cable alongside the $15 widgets you actually want, or price cap + use Best Match.
eBay has always nickle and dimed you. I remember a friend saying that in the early 2000s when he ran a big eBay store. He always tried to avoid eBay but you made money easier online than at a flea market or Craigslist which come with their own headaches.
He's much happier doing live auctions on WhatNot these days, which seems to be eating into eBay's business
I just can't fathom how employees of a company would do all this because someone with a newsletter criticized the company often.
I understand employees committing fraud for their own gain. I don't understand Directors and analysts doing this to someone, especially when senior execs weren't charged. Seems like there were a lot of cover ups going on.
Brian Gilbert, 56, of San Jose, Calif., former Senior Manager of Special Operations for eBay’s Global Security Team, was sentenced to time served, one year of supervised release with the special condition that he have no contact with either of the victims in the case and a $20,000 fine
Jim Baugh, 47, of San Jose, Calif., eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, was sentenced to 57 months in prison
David Harville, 50, of Las Vegas, Nev., former Director of Global Resiliency, was sentenced to 24 months in prison
Stephanie Popp, 34, of Louisville, Ky., former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to 12 months in prison
Philip Cooke, 56, of San Jose, Calif., a former Senior Manager of Security Operations, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and 12 months of home confinement
Stephanie Stockwell, 28, of Redwood City, Calif., a former Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to one year in home confinement
Veronica Zea, 28, of San Jose, Calif., a contract intelligence analyst, was sentenced to one year in home confinement
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/final-defendant-ebay-cybe...
No consequences for executives, and yet their ostensibly enormous responsibility is how their salaries and benefits are always justified.
What I really don't understand is why the security people who sent to jail didn't drop their boss in it in return for diminishing their role
There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.
Mobsters have it down to an art.
"You take care of it." means "Murder him and dump the body into a building foundation."
"I don't see any problems." can mean "The ambush will happen at the scheduled time. Vinnie will clean up the bodies."
etc.
You'll also see a lot of politicians using "dog whistle" statements, that are interpreted by listeners to mean something entirely different from the stated words.
> Mobsters have it down to an art
Non-mobsters aren’t always as careful. There is a good chance these guys just weren’t properly investigated.
A good fictional example of this I often think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH5j9RHCBpM
Dealing with turbulence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
Wasn't the strategy of Mafia bosses to say something vague like "I sure wish that guy would go away".
It was implicit that they wanted someone killed but if brought up in court they could say "I was just expressing an opinion, not giving an order"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...
If by mafia you mean English Crown sure.
I'm not a lawyer, but isn't RICO meant to give a way to prosecute those who are at the top of organizations that have people committing crimes like this?
Possibly because they hope for gainful employment in future, and being a whistleblower of any variety tends to massively reduce the chances of that.
Cush consulting jobs after the fact. You don’t burn your social network unless the alternate is serious jail time. Given the slaps on the wrists described, clearly the after conviction pay day is more valuable.
> Cush consulting jobs after
Do you have evidence any of these folks got these?
Or generally, if any tech criminals now show nice consulting gigs on their LinkedIns and seem to have traction.
Wonder if any Enron perps are doing well, or Bernie Madoff’s associates, or if Elizabeth Holmes or SBF had righthand men…
When will the executives face criminal trial too?
“ The seven members of eBay’s security team were all criminally charged and sentenced to prison, home confinement or time served.
Other executives went on to other corporate jobs. Wymer and Wenig left eBay in September 2019, before the charges were filed. The following year, Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.
The Steiners sued the trio and other former executives along with the company in the case that led to the $56mn payout. Under the terms of the settlement, Wenig agreed to pay $2mn, Jones must contribute $500,000 and Wymer $50,000, according to the pair’s lawyers.”
Do we know what AI startup? I think its important for people to know when they do business with that startup.
https://symbolic.ai/team
And on the other hand, let's see how the C-suite made out:
(These were the Chief Communication Officer, CEO, and SVP for Global Operations, respectively)> Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley
Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley lists its corporate donors as including Alliance Roofing · Amgen Foundation · Applied Materials · ASML · Comcast · Deloitte · EY · First Tech Federal Credit Union · Fremont Bank Foundation · Groundworks · Microsoft · NetApp · Peninsula Building Materials (PBM) · Project Learn / Panda Cares · Rite Aid Healthy Futures. If you work at or with any of these, flag this reporting to them.
The organization also appears to work with the City of San Jose and the Morgan Hill school district. (An abusive alleged excon running a kids’ charity is absurd to the point of being hilarious. Whoever was supposed to vet him for hiring should also find a new calling.)
I adore our local boys and girls club, our kids are there every weekday and they adore it too. We have donated a little bit of money monthly for almost a decade. I do not love the big money vanity donors but they are what make the place tick.
This is another level… I would be so angry if this clown were running our metro area. I feel obligated to write letters to all of those donors even though we are on the other coast.
> our kids are there every weekday and they adore it too. We have donated a little bit of money monthly for almost a decade
Write to the national organization. Like, this guy is credibly accused of—and has settled claims around—seriously abusive behavior. He should not be around kids.
Simple, one page: I am a donor and a parent who trusts their kids to your organization. I saw this reporting and was shocked.
It may honestly not be on their radars.
> Whoever was supposed to vet him for hiring should also find a new calling.
I don't think people at that level are really "vetted," these days[0].
[0] https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea...
I assume this has been investigated but it's difficult to believe this stopped at one pair of critics. There are plenty of people online critical of eBay. Were they running similar campaigns on anyone else?
> Seven members of eBay’s security team, including former police captains, “worked together to harass and intimidate the Steiners”, according to prosecutors.
I hope someone's looking into the careers of the "former police captains" here. Again, difficult to believe they just woke up one day and decided to fly cross-country to vandalize someone's house with no prior history of intimidation.
From the facts that came out at his trial [1], it seems like Baugh, the guy who ran the operation, was basically feral. At one point during his cross-country trip to harass these people, he was also trying to organize a blackmail campaign (with eBay personnel and resources) against a prosecutor in Arkansas who was charging his father with something? [2]
[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18602070/united-states-...
[2] Page 19, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.227...
Scott Adams [0], who recently passed away, had a great line on human behavior (paraphrased):
Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly.
For another example, the Google case where it was exposed how many nefarious activities they were up to around auction bidding.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
In one of my college courses, 100% of my fellow students cheated, including me. This is when I learned that virtually every person is deep down a liar and a cheat if they think they won't face consequences and it's in their benefit, and any public facade of virtue that people put up, common in this industry, is a manipulation strategy that is just more cheating, although of a different kind.
i don't even understand the benefit of cheating on a college course, unless you think you're going to fail
[delayed]
More job opportunities due to better grades. It's not mutually exclusive with learning the material, it's just an additional bump.
"Trust but verify" and "Locks keep honest people honest"
Some people might be absolutely moral, but most just don't want to experience consequences
Side note but did anyone here tried to sell stuff on eBay ?
Their pricing are insane, they take a cut on your product price, but also on the delivery method and even on the taxes !
It amounts to about 13% of total price, including delivery and taxes.
It looks absolutely insane to me, but some people seem to defend it.
To put some perspective, here in France we have an extremely profitable competitor called Leboncoin, it's crushing eBay shares in the country, and they take only 5% cut on the product price.
> It looks absolutely insane to me, but some people seem to defend it.
Before that policy, you had a bunch of items listed for $1 + $60 "shipping" to dodge fees. I'll take the current structure over that.
Making you pay ~12% fee on foreign country taxes collected by eBay, when those taxes can’t be gamed like postage was, is a bridge too far.
I used to offer listings to the world, now I just add Japan for the odd rare item.
Stuff is still getting listed like that on ebay.
Too expensive for things you can sell for cash on one of the dumb local marketplaces or on Craigslist.
Super niche stuff you need to be able to advertise to Timbuktu & Japan & LA & NY in hopes of finding a single buyer… fine take your 15%.
Great place to buy new stuff w/o enriching Bezos. Filter Buy It Now + Lowest Price First & hope they’ve fixed the “list a 99 cent cable alongside the $15 widgets you actually want, or price cap + use Best Match.
eBay has always nickle and dimed you. I remember a friend saying that in the early 2000s when he ran a big eBay store. He always tried to avoid eBay but you made money easier online than at a flea market or Craigslist which come with their own headaches.
He's much happier doing live auctions on WhatNot these days, which seems to be eating into eBay's business
https://archive.is/dNAEY
Good to know I can buy FT Digital Edition for undefined per month to read this article.
$<surveillance price pending>
Oof. I didn't even think of that.
I just can't fathom how employees of a company would do all this because someone with a newsletter criticized the company often.
I understand employees committing fraud for their own gain. I don't understand Directors and analysts doing this to someone, especially when senior execs weren't charged. Seems like there were a lot of cover ups going on.
There've been a few recent submissions of this story over the past week or so, but none with significant discussion.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244> (6 comments) had the most activity.
So no, this wouldn't count as a dupe.
it's difficult to believ that this was there first time doing this