Former eBay’s director of global sustainability, David Harville, pleaded guilty to participating in a bizarre harassment campaign that included sending live cockroaches, spiders, a bloody pig face mask and other strange items to a Massachusetts couple (via The guardian). Harville is the last of seven eBay employees to plead guilty to harassing and harassing the couple.
In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) accused former eBay employees Harville, James Bowe, Stephanie Pop, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, Veronica Zia and Philip Cook of developing a harassment campaign targeting Ina and David Steiner, the publishers behind EcommerceBytes newsletter. The group’s scheme was intended to intimidate the Steiner family over the negative coverage of their eBay post. This not only included harassing Steiner on Twitter and docking their address online, but later escalated to sending grotesque items to their homes and personal surveillance.
Harville pleaded guilty to five counts of crime during a video interview with a federal court judge in Boston on Thursday. According to the initial file, Harville claims to have flown from California to Boston with the intention of driving to Steiner’s home, breaking into their garage and attaching a GPS tracking device to their vehicle. Harville was also not the only one more highly involved – Pop was a former senior manager of eBay for global intelligence, Gilbert was a former senior manager of special operations, Baugh served as senior director of security and safety at eBay, and Stockwell was a former manager of Global Intelligence Company center.
In April, Baugh pleaded guilty to the harassment scheme and faces up to 20 years in prison on September 29, 2022. Pop, Stockwell, Gilbert and Cook pleaded guilty in 2020. Cook was subsequently convicted of 18 months in prison.