eBay agreed to pay nearly $50M to couple who were sent cockroaches, bloody pig mask from ex-employees

eBay Inc.agreed to pay almost $50 million to a Massachusetts couple who said former employees of the company targeted them with threats and bizarre anonymous deliveries — including live insects, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig Halloween mask, according to settlement details released Tuesday.The parties reported reaching a tentative settlement in February as the case was headed to trial, but they were unable to finalize it.David and Ina Steiner asked a federal judge in June to restore the case to the trial calendar and reached a new settlement this month.The agreement with the Steiners, founders of EcommerceBytes, a newsletter covering the e-commerce industry, includes an additional $7 million in charitable donations, including to organizations supporting First Amendment rights.The settlement contains no confidentiality provision, allowing the Steiners to discuss the case publicly.“David and I were on the same page that this settlement should and must be made public — as victims who want to prevent something like this from ever happening to anyone else, and as reporters who believe in transparency,” Ina Steiner said Tuesday in an email response to questions from The Associated Press.

“We hope that this case will serve as a deterrent.”The settlement resolves more than six years of criminal and civil proceedings stemming from the harassment campaign.In their 2021 lawsuit filed in Boston federal court, the Steiners said that the company engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them” in order to “stifle their reporting on eBay.”The Natick residents, who report on the e-commerce industry in their newsletter, said they were subjected to cyberstalking, death threats and in-person surveillance by former eBay workers.Ina Steiner said the campaign began with threatening direct messages on social media before escalating into anonymous deliveries of live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath...