A Massachusetts couple subjected to threats and different weird harassment from former eBay workers filed a civil lawsuit towards the Silicon Valley big on Wednesday.
David and Ina Steiner say of their lawsuit filed in Boston federal court docket that the corporate engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them” to be able to “stifle their reporting on eBay.”
The Natick residents, who run EcommerceBytes, a web based publication centered on the e-commerce trade, say they had been subjected to cyberstalking, dying threats, weird deliveries, and in-person surveillance from firm employees. They’re looking for damages to be awarded by a jury.
“This has been an unbelievably tough ordeal for my spouse and I,” David Steiner mentioned in an announcement Wednesday. “By no means did we think about doing our jobs as journalists would result in this. We need to shield the rights of reporters and their freedom of the press. We’ve endured monumental cruelty and abuse and feared for our lives. If this habits can occur to us, it might occur to anybody.”
Spokespersons for eBay didn’t reply to an e-mail looking for remark.
A number of former eBay workers had been charged final June for his or her roles within the harassment marketing campaign. Not less than 5 have already pleaded responsible.
Federal prosecutors have mentioned the harassment included nameless deliveries of things like stay bugs, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig face Halloween masks to the couple’s house. The workers additionally despatched pornographic magazines with the husband’s title on it to their neighbor’s home and deliberate to interrupt into the couple’s storage to put in a GPS gadget on their automotive.
“This was a decided, systematic effort by senior workers of a significant firm to destroy the lives of a pair in Natick all as a result of they revealed content material that firm executives didn’t like,” then-US Legal professional for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling mentioned on the time.
