Read this: eBay's absurd plot to "crush" critical bloggers with cockroaches and unsolicited pizza
Aux Features great job internet
This week the New York Times published an in-depth story about eBay’s bizarre, poorly-coordinated attack on a blogger couple that involved deliveries of cockroaches and fly larvae, unsolicited pizza, and targeted shipments of pornography to the couple’s neighbors. If that sounds like the plot of a movie, that’s because one of the ringleaders of this absurd operation fancied himself something of a movie and TV aficionado; most of his ideas came from movies like Old School and Johnny Be Good. That man is James Baugh, the now-former head of eBay’s “Global Security and Resiliency” division, who was arrested and charged by the U.S. Department of Justice over the summer with conspiring to commit cyberstalking and tamper with witnesses. This story is truly a Steven Soderbergh movie waiting to happen.
The story begins from the perspective of another defendant in the case, Natalie Zea, an entry-level subordinate of Baugh’s who has plead guilty for her part in the attacks on the bloggers—Ina and David Steiner, a couple from the Boston suburb of Natick, who posted articles critical of eBay’s practices on their website, EcommerceBytes. Those posts drew the attention of eBay communications chief Steve Wymer and C.E.O. Devin Wenig, who instructed Baugh to “Take [Ina Steiner] down.” What’s particularly striking about the text messages between Wenig and Wymer, obtained by the Times, is the strong language used, like “I want to see ashes,” and “Whatever it takes”—as if they’re discussing a formidable corporate entity or rival. Instead, they’re talking about a mom-and-pop blogging duo who used their affinity for yard sales and collecting books to launch a fairly unassuming blog about internet commerce for like-minded folks.
Baugh, who comes off like Seth Rogen in Observe And Report, used scenes from movies and TV shows to train his division—he showed them a scene from Full Metal Jacket to teach them about keeping their lockers clean, and a scene from Billions to emphasize the concept of loyalty. Baugh and his team created fake Twitter accounts to harass the Steiners and “infiltrate” their operation, which they erroneously believed to include a third party, a Twitter user named “Fidomaster” who occasionally tweeted critical opinions about eBay. Baugh’s team tried to Catfish Fidomaster by pretending to be a former employee of eBay—a young woman—who claimed to have “extremely damaging videos of executives misbehaving” and wanted Fidomaster’s help to send them to the Steiners. The end result is a hilarious back-and-forth in which Fidomaster tells the young woman she should just contact Ina Steiner directly (her email is public) or get a lawyer.
What follows is a series of barely-competent attacks on the Steiners, with Baugh’s team sending the couple packages filled with spiders, fly larvae, and cockroaches, and a bloody pig mask; they had a $70 pizza order sent to the Steiner home. Later, after publishing a Craigslist post inviting anyone and everyone to daily swinger parties at the Steiner house, Zea says Baugh laughed while repeatedly watching the scene from Old School in which a man opens his front door to find a stranger who says, “I’m here for the gang bang.” Baugh’s operation was so poorly-planned that it was quickly and fairly easily foiled by local police not long into the attacks.
All told, six eBay employees were charged by the U.S. Department of Justice. The cynical punchline: Wenig and Wymer—who empowered Baugh to act on their grudge against the Steiners—have not been charged.
27 Comments
This is one of the most insane things I’ve read. Why would anyone, let alone top executives at a massive company, think that this was a good idea? This is a bad Will Ferrell movie at heart.
Something to be said about how much of our reality is shaped by Hollywood. You think Trump happens if he hadn’t been playing a rich businessman character on tv for 30 years?
I’ve actually thought a lot about that. If someone had either stopped The Apprentice from being made, or talked Mark Burnett into picking someone else to head it, would we be here today? I honestly don’t think so. The Apprentice gave a lifeline to Trump that allowed him to market his name across numerous industries, as well as paying him well. Had he not been on that show, his house of cards likely would have collapsed already.
If I start badmouthing eBay will they send me free pizza?
I think the idea of the pizza was that it *wasn’t* free. As in the deliveryman still expected to get paid even though they didn’t really order it.
So it’s the deliveryperson who gets screwed.
Nice!
I seem to remember that being a gag on a sitcom somewhere, like at some point Michael Scott sent 100 pizzas to the Stanford branch and said, “It cost me 1,500 bucks, but it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!”
It’s a cliche from the 80s. From kids’ shows and stuff. Order pizzas to someone’s house. It’s one of those weird things like anchovies on pizza, that were everywhere in the 80s and then disappeared.
AFAIK most Domino’s still offer anchovies but it’s up to the franchise/manager. Both my past stores ordered some about once a year (so like 8 cans a year and half would get tossed). I think the only time people ordered them was to see what it was like.
Makes sense. It’s an acquired taste. But you know how “Pineapple on pizza? Ew!” is a thing now? Back then it was about anchovies. Kids being excited to order a pizza and then disgusted it has anchovies on it, or the glutton character ordering a pizza with no anchovies, were stock jokes. Now I’m wondering about the history of fast food pizza. I assume anchovies were there as pizza places morphed from Italian-American owned family businesses, where there would be some kind of puttanesca sauce on bread, to corporate chains where the consumer can customise, and anchovies got grandfathered in until we realised that it’s a really salty fish that makes sense as an ingredient but not a standalone flavour.
What the fuck? Has EVERY wealthy executive caught the Trump Stupid Asshole Disorder (T-SAD) since 2016?
I mean, most were already assholes, but the rank stupidity of the recent assholery simply boggles the mind.
Nah, they’ve always been like this. It’s just that we had a few decades there where we actually had regulations and enforced them, so it didn’t happen as often.Remember kids, Trump’s not the problem, he’s a symptom.
I don’t think there has been much change regarding whether you can send cockroaches to your enemies. Local police still can and will deal with that.
Are you sure? I mean, I’m not saying that these folks have ever been all sunshine and rainbows, there’s always been the cartoonish Montgomery Burns-level greed coupled with pathological self-regard and a total disregard for the welfare of others, but I don’t remember it being this wildly, wastefully petty and stupid before.
I mean, they spent time and money on this. There were meetings. There was a budget line-item for “dumb grudge against a blog because they’re poo-poo head meanies.” There was even a conspiracy theory about who was really involved. It’s fucking nuts in a way completely separate from normal corporate evil shenanigans.
And there’s been other shit like this. Not the relatively mature corporate PR “tamp it down, make a gesture, and get it to go away” stuff, or even the behind-the-scenes “let’s see what we can do to undermine the entity being critical” (*ahem*) evil, but the weird public doubling down, “HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY PERPETUAL AWESOMENESS, I’M RUBBER, YOU’RE GLUE” stupid and childish temper-tantrums from wealthy executives.
“It’s fucking nuts in a way completely separate from normal corporate evil shenanigans.”Like what? Union Carbide? Phillip Morris? Halliburton?
Like what? Union Carbide? Phillip Morris? Halliburton?Well, yeah. All that is profit uber alles, amoral scumbaggery that’s enraging or depressing but is hardly surprising. “What, you mean a giant corporation put profit ahead of lives? They knew what they were doing would kill people and didn’t give a shit? The hell you say!”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is worse, just that it’s dumber.
Drunken frat boy with daddy issues or insecure high school jock? You make the call!
In fairness, when I used to sell on Ebay regularly vintage movie posters and screen used costumes, in a fit of pique I did send Meg Whitman live eels for screwing it all up and making the Ebay sellers so very vulnerable to fraud by conniving purchasers. When that didn’t work I kept sending her links to AV Club and she up and quit her position.
I think that means you’re technically responsible for Quibi.
If that’s the case, I have a very stinky fish for AlienJesus’s mailbox for indirectly unleashing Quibi on the world.
A 10 minute fish in portrait not landscape I hope!
It always comes from the top. Every single person in charge at ebay knew about this, and encouraged it. None of them got in trouble. Instead they got massive payouts. Ebay is a company that is slowly dying and it’s because of the actions of the people who have led the company for the last 5 years. Finding out they did stuff like this is not much of a surprise. If you put incompetent people in charge you can expect to see crazy shit happen.
Anybody who relies on ebay to make a living (like myself) has seen the quick decline that has happened to the site, the massive lowering in quality of their customer service, and the dramatic rise in anti-seller policies. Without massive changes ebay has only a couple years left. Which is unfortunate, because they used to be a great company that provided a great service and there is no comparable substitute yet.
At this point, many people will be thrilled if it goes belly up. The reseller/scalping culture that arose from eBay has many people upset.
It’s going to be a slow collapse, but it is starting already. Ebay is trying to transition to having big companies as sellers, instead of people. As they push out small sellers the availability of non-new items becomes scarcer. Which gives the buyers less and less reason to shop there. Eventually it will hit the tipping point.Bad management, lack of foresight, putting immediate profits before long term success. All together they spell the end of a business.
My plan is to build a website and start transitioning my stuff over by the end of the year. I have a good domain name, I have a friend that does SEO work, and I have physical products to sell that can be hard to find elsewhere. I won’t get the same number of views, and will sell less. But I will also have lower costs and more control. And mostly I am just tired of being dicked around by ebay. I have paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees and they still treat me like shit, lie to my face, and break their own rules to help scammers. If ebay was a person I would spray pepper spray in their eyes and kick them in the nuts.
The woman is actually named Veronica Zea. I think Natalie Zea was in Justified.
The story begins from the perspective of another defendant in the case, Natalie Zea, an entry-level subordinate of Baugh’s who has plead guilty for her part in the attacks on the bloggers
So, not the actress getting SUPER INTO preparing for a role then. Well, that’s good, I guess.
Steve Wymer was recently named the CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley.