00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:45.760Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:51.160There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:03.680I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:09.400Last week, we were talking about one of the wildest tech stories I have ever heard about.
00:02:14.860This is a two-part episode, so this is part two.
00:02:17.260If you missed part one, you should listen to that first.
00:02:19.940To catch you up, though, we've got a husband and wife in Natick, Massachusetts, Ina and David Steiner, who, for the last 20 years, ran a small newsletter covering eBay called Ecommerce Bytes.
00:02:32.600It's a trade publication, a trusted source for the kind of small sellers who depend on knowing how eBay works as a platform.
00:02:39.800And in 2019, eBay CEO David Wennig, under pressure from an activist investor threatening his job, decided that Ina Steiner needed to be, in the words of his chief communications officer, Steve Weimer, crushed.0.89
00:02:57.480Wennig texted back, quote, take her down.
00:03:01.180So Weimer escalated that to eBay's head of security, a man named Jim Baugh,
00:03:06.200former CIA, National Clandestine Service, with instructions to, quote,
00:03:11.940do whatever it takes and a promise that he wanted to see ashes.
00:03:17.440Producer Mike, what followed is one of the most unhinged corporate harassment campaigns in American history.
00:03:25.700You know it's bad when the plan has an actual codename, in this case,
00:03:30.220The White Knight Strategy, designed to terrorize designers into outing an anonymous source while eBay breezed in as their fake savior.
00:03:39.200The things that they're doing to terrorize this poor couple that their big crime was running this eBay newsletter was graffitiing their fence, sending them hundreds of disturbing newsletter subscriptions, death threats, sending a book to David called How to Grieve the Loss of a Spouse and a Funeral Reef,
00:03:58.380which they understandably understood as a death threat, sending them live cockroaches, live spiders, a bloody pig mask,
00:04:06.420sending pornographic magazines with their name on it to their neighbors, posting their address online with invitations to sex parties,
00:04:14.500physical surveillance from a rented van, and an attempted break-in to install a GPS tracker on their car.
00:04:22.100Jim Baugh, eBay's head of security, didn't do this with like a hardened, grizzled team of operatives.
00:04:28.420He did it with a team of mostly young women who he called Jim's Angels, who he, according to a former staffer's testimony, systematically broke down through coercive control, sexual harassment, and sleep deprivation.
00:04:43.460That's a bit of a refresher of where we've been.
00:04:47.060Bridget, that was an impressively brief recap of everything that we covered in that first episode.
00:04:55.960So where we left off, the whole thing had unraveled because David Steiner, while he was being followed by a mysterious van,
00:05:05.280photographed the license plate of that van after all this harassment had been ramping up.
00:05:10.460The police were able to track the full license plate of that van to a 25-year-old eBay intelligence analyst named Veronica Z, who had been flown in from San Jose specifically to terrorize this couple in their hometown.
00:05:27.700I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like there is something inherently unsettling about being followed by a mysterious van.
00:05:35.460Oh, what's funny is I'm not even sure I would realize if I was being followed by a van.
00:05:40.460you just be like oh there's a lot of vans out here yeah i i guess part of it is living in
00:05:47.180someplace walkable i don't drive a ton so i think that people who drive a lot i i would i would
00:05:53.480notice if i was being followed by a person on foot if i was driving my car and being followed
00:05:57.980by a van i'm honestly not even sure i would notice that's not now someone's gonna be like
00:06:02.020oh i want to get to bridget just get her while she's driving she's not gonna know the difference1.00
00:06:06.840She's going to be hitting curbs and drinking iced coffee.1.00
00:06:09.300She's not going to know what's going on.
00:06:13.260So if they were following you in a van, they'd be cruising along at like two and a half miles an hour, like walking speed, which would be highly suspicious.
00:06:26.800Even as the police were traveling to this hotel to find the person who rented this van, this 25-year-old eBay analyst, the stream of threatening tweets against the Steiners continued.
00:06:40.240So even as the police were physically closing in on the culprits, this harassment was continuing to ramp up on social media.
00:06:48.080it. So I had said earlier how had I been the Steiners of all the different people in my
00:06:54.560landscape, people that I work with, people that I've met, people that I just engage with on the
00:06:59.520street, people I might have cut off in traffic or something. I would have thought that one of those
00:07:05.000people might be the culprit before I ever thought it would be eBay. I would be so surprised. And
00:07:10.980that is exactly what Ina Steiner said. She said that when she found out that eBay was behind all
00:07:16.120of this. She told 60 Minutes, quote, I don't know. I can't describe how flabbergasted we were.
00:07:22.240eBay? I mean, what was an eBay employee doing in a rental van following David?
00:07:28.960Harassment. They were doing harassment.
00:07:31.040Yeah. Covert harassment and criminal behavior. So you know how they say it's not the crime,
00:07:39.120Yeah, I've heard that. It seems really relevant these days.
00:07:41.640Yes. So when law enforcement came knocking, Jim Baugh, eBay's head of security, did not cooperate. He made false statements to police. He and his team deleted digital evidence. He even falsified records to throw investigators off of the trail. All of this is confirmed and sourced directly from the Department of Justice and eBay's own admission of facts.
00:08:03.020Jim Ball made false statements to both police and internal investigators.
00:08:07.440During the 60 Minutes episode about all of this, an attorney representing the Steiners said that Steve Weimer deleted his text messages related to this harassment campaign even after everybody involved and everybody at eBay had been notified that, you know, a criminal investigation was going on and that they needed to preserve everything.
00:08:30.680If I did that, I'd be sitting in a jail cell somewhere right now.
00:08:34.540I'm not an attorney, but I've seen enough TV crime dramas to know that you can't just like delete evidence after you've become aware that an investigation is happening.
00:08:45.920Like you can try, but if they catch you, that's like an extra crime on top of your original crimes.
00:08:53.000Well, I think you can if you are a higher up at eBay, because that's exactly what these dudes did.
00:08:59.440And not all of them faced charges for it.
00:09:02.820Speaking of consequences, what about the higher ups who gave the orders here?
00:09:08.900So let's start at the top and work our way down, shall we?1.00
00:09:12.620Let's start with David Wennig, the CEO of eBay, who texted, take her down.
00:11:43.160He wanted to take her for a nice fire and make s'mores?
00:11:48.240And then there's this third executive, the original coverage really didn't mention a lot, named Wendy Jones.
00:11:54.440She was eBay's senior vice president of global operations.
00:11:57.900And the court documents show that Baugh kind of kept her in the loop throughout this whole harassment campaign.
00:12:03.420He would copy her or CC her on messages and that she would just respond with a thumbs up emoji, which I got to say, I actually kind of low key respect.
00:12:14.900You know, at least she isn't typing out good crimes.
00:12:24.160Keep up the illegal harassment campaign.0.97
00:12:26.460I approve of this harassment campaign.
00:12:28.620I mean, it's not great, obviously, but at least there's some plausible deniability there.0.98
00:12:33.420Yeah, like some recognition that what she's doing is illegal and unethical and she does not want to be explicitly implicated in it.
00:12:43.060I always wonder, have these people never heard of a goddang phone call where instead of going in to take her down, let's see ashes, now's the time to strike.
00:12:53.800If you're going to be having conversations about this, just do it over the phone.
00:12:58.480These people and people like them in these positions just feel invincible.
00:13:03.620They can't even imagine a scenario where they would face consequences for their actions.
00:13:09.220I will say, I just said that people should talk on the phone about their incriminating conversations.
00:19:33.140So let's talk about Jim Baugh, former head of security for eBay, the sort of architect of this whole thing, because he really tells a very different story.
00:19:44.000His lawyers argued that he faced relentless pressure from Wennig and other executives to handle this Steiner problem and that he was given what the civil lawsuit describes as, quote,
00:19:55.140quote, carte blanche authority to terminate the Steiners reporting by whatever means necessary.
00:20:01.000Little side note, Mike laughed on the video feed when I said this because this is like a little
00:20:05.960joke between us. If you've ever had the displeasure of watching probably one of the worst shows I have
00:20:11.380ever seen, HBO's The Idol that stars The Weeknd. There is a scene in the show where he, The Weeknd,
00:20:32.840because the fact that nobody corrected him0.98
00:20:35.000and they just like let him say carte blanche
00:20:36.520to me is like, okay, everyone hates you.
00:20:39.400That's become a little bit of a running joke
00:20:41.520between us to the point where we pronounce it carte blanche.
00:20:45.520And I almost said carte blanche as I was reading that quote.
00:20:49.300I think I drafted some other thing for you earlier this week, and I specifically used the phrase carte blanche because I wanted to trick you into saying carte blanche.
00:21:00.260If you ever hear me say carte blanche on the podcast, I know it's pronounced carte blanche.
00:21:07.240It's just like, it's how I say it now.
00:21:10.720Let's talk about Ba. His story is so interesting because we talked about these executives and how they're shielded from accountability and consequences. And I feel like he's kind of right at that middle management level where I have to imagine that he thought he was one of them in terms of being able to do whatever illegal shit he wanted without consequences.
00:21:35.660But then once the authorities came knocking, he was the first one offered up to be thrown under the bus.0.97
00:21:43.440Yeah, what a terrible way to find out.
00:21:46.520You go this whole thing thinking it's us against them.
00:21:49.640And then you find out, wait a minute, I'm not part of the us.
00:21:59.980And I have to imagine that he probably did think that he was one of the top guys, was going to be protected like these other top guys were, and then come to find out, I'm simply a goon to them. I'm simply a hired goon to them. I am someone that they can throw to the wolves.
00:22:16.840They have actually intentionally insulated themselves from consequences and set it up so that I am the one who is putting everything into motion and I am the one who is absorbing all of all the consequences, even though I'm doing this, if you take him at his word, at their direction.
00:22:32.260Because when this whole thing collapsed, Ball alleged that an army of outside lawyers immediately descended onto eBay to conduct an internal investigation, one that, if you believe him, was designed not to find the truth, but to save the company and its top executives from prosecution.
00:22:49.620So basically, if you believe him, they essentially directed him to do this illegal behavior.0.99
00:22:56.760And as soon as it was found out, they all had internal eBay machinations to protect them from any kind of consequences and basically send his ass to jail.0.99
00:23:12.300We're just going to be back here raking in the tens of millions of dollars of severance.
00:23:16.780The way I would never do a legal behavior for a day job, like a nine-to-five day job, this is why I feel like this story, it's hard for me to put myself in the shoes of someone like Jim Baugh, where you just have this job, you know, you don't own eBay, you're not, like, if eBay does super well financially, it's not like you're going to see more money.
00:23:43.560your salary is your salary, I assume. It's hard for me to be like, yeah, I'll risk serious jail
00:23:49.240time for this nine to five job. I simply cannot imagine it. I've been trying to put my finger on
00:23:56.600exactly what it is about this story that's so weird. And it is exactly that. It's not just the
00:24:01.740idea that these people would engage in illegal harassment or whatever. Like, that's not cool.
00:24:08.160But like, I can imagine people doing that sort of stuff. People do terrible stuff like that all
00:24:12.440the time. But the thing that makes it so weird is that they were like salaried employees. They got
00:24:16.500W-2s. They probably had health insurance, right? Like they had an office they clocked into.
00:24:21.860You know, they probably had annual evaluations and HR people following up on them.
00:24:27.180And that is the context in which they were doing off the books and legal stuff where they were
00:24:33.780covering their trail. I don't even want to show up to the office in person. You think I'm going
00:24:38.300to jail for this company you got another thing coming that'll be like a new workplace trend
00:24:48.320that they talk about in Forbes like quiet serving time yeah goons are doing this new trend instead
00:24:57.000of quiet quitting they're quiet serving time stay up with the hottest goon trends
00:25:02.100So eBay's own internal investigation, the one that, if you believe Jim Baugh, was basically not a real investigation at all, was just meant to protect the company and the executives, concluded, well, wouldn't you know it, that the CEO, Wennig, while his tone was improper and unacceptable, they found no evidence that he directed any of the criminal acts.
00:25:25.420Isn't that convenient? Like, this guy sounds like such an asshole, but I do almost have to feel sorry for him because it just seems like he was so naive to be like shocked, shocked that the company's internal investigation was designed to protect the company and not him, just some like peon foot soldier who was clearly disposable to the company.0.98
00:25:49.840I don't want to keep connecting it to Trump, but I see that in Trump. When you look at the way that Trump uses people for their value or for a specific purpose, and then so quickly throws them under the bus, I do not understand how people don't realize, well, clearly it's only a matter of time until I'm being thrown under the bus. Like, this is what they do.1.00
00:26:12.300so let's keep it moving let's zoom out from bar and let's move up the chain to the people who are
00:26:19.880giving the orders and the company ebay like how unusual is it for a company like this to be
00:26:27.940running these kinds of activities are there other examples i'm glad you asked because this is not
00:26:34.160unique let's zoom out for a second i think it would be very easy to hear a story like this and
00:26:39.860think. eBay is a uniquely toxic and deranged company, and former CEO Devin Wenig is a uniquely
00:26:48.420vindictive leader. This is an anomaly. But you would be wrong because this is not an anomaly.
00:26:55.400I mentioned this in our first installment of this episode, but while I was reporting this episode,
00:27:00.060I just kept coming back in my mind to this Wired piece about Madison Square Garden that we talked
00:27:05.880about in a news roundup a few weeks ago about the owner of the New York Knicks basketball team,
00:27:10.400a man named James Dolan. And I want to talk about it here because when you read that piece and then
00:27:16.760you look into what happened with eBay, the architecture is nearly identical and there
00:27:22.160are so many overlaps. So Dolan, like Wenig, has a personal enemies list. He has watch lists of
00:27:29.980basketball fans who have dared to criticize the management of his team. His security team blocked
00:27:36.680a graphic designer from attending a concert at Madison Square Garden because years earlier that
00:27:41.340designer had printed and sold half a dozen t-shirts that said, Ban Dolan. He banned an entire law firm's
00:27:49.700worth of lawyers from his venues. He kept a mom who was just trying to take her nine-year-old
00:27:54.740Girl Scout to a Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall because her co-worker had made him
00:28:00.660angry. And just like eBay, Dolan did not just hire, you know, your normal run-of-the-mill
00:28:07.740security guards. He hired a private intelligence apparatus. His head of corporate security,
00:28:14.240a man named John Eversold, is a former global investigations director with a military background,
00:28:20.480including what he described on his LinkedIn profile as being on the executive protective
00:28:25.220detail for the office of the Secretary of Defense. According to this Wired piece,
00:28:30.780they talked to lots of people who presently and formerly worked at Madison Square Garden.
00:28:35.980He walks around the office flashing a gun, according to multiple staffers who spoke to Wired,
00:28:41.420like he was in Miami Vice in the 80s. That is a piece of that story that stands out to be as
00:29:17.040underneath him were often asked to do things that they were not comfortable with, that they were
00:29:22.580like, how did I wind up doing this? And here's the detail that really ties these two stories
00:29:27.520together. David Harville, who was Jim Baugh's deputy at eBay, the one who got 24 months in
00:29:33.340federal prison for his role in terrorizing the Steiners, took a job at a Dolan-owned company
00:29:38.940before he was sentenced for his part of the whole eBay harassment campaign. John Eversol,
00:29:45.180Madison Square Garden's head of security, wrote a letter calling Harville, quote,
00:29:49.540a man of extreme integrity and with the highest moral standards. He wrote this letter shortly
00:29:54.560before Harville went to prison for stalking the Steiners with a box of live cockroaches.
00:30:01.180I feel like me and Eversol might have a different definition of extreme integrity and moral
00:30:08.040standards. Yeah, that is one way to put it. So these men, you know, they know each other,
00:30:14.080they hire each other, they rehabilitate each other's reputations and launder each other's
00:30:19.100reputations and give each other jobs. It is like a professional network, which leads me to Nina
00:30:25.380Richards. So Nina is a trans woman. She liked going to see the Knicks play basketball at Madison0.97
00:30:31.460Square Garden. That is her entire offense in this story, just enjoying a heretofore terrible
00:30:37.220basketball franchise. In 2021, she starts going to Knicks games regularly at the Garden. At some
00:30:44.420point, she became what a lawsuit filed by a former Madison Square Garden security staffer
00:30:50.020describes as a fixation for John Eversol, that head of security at the Garden. Very, very similar
00:30:56.980to the whole eBay story where this one couple becomes a fixation and they have to figure out
00:31:02.840a way to neutralize and take down this perceived threat to their entire operation. Whether or not
00:31:08.980that threat is actually grounded in anything real. I mean, if they don't, this woman might0.99
00:31:14.180enjoy a basketball game. Yeah, you can't have this one trans woman enjoy a basketball game1.00
00:31:19.800at a sports arena. The whole operation would fall apart. Think of the children, Bridget.1.00
00:31:27.180So Eversol ordered his team to build out dossiers on her, conduct surveillance on her, open source intelligence reports on her.
00:31:37.060The same kind of work product that you would commission on like a corporate espionage target or a foreign national of interest on this person who was simply attending basketball games.
00:31:47.080He put her photo in Madison Square Garden's facial recognition system so that she would be flagged automatically at entry for surveillance.
00:31:54.880He showed her photo in weekly security briefings.
00:31:58.180And according to a lawsuit, when he talked about her to the staff,
00:32:02.020he referenced her with dehumanizing and misgendering language.
00:32:05.880You know, we cover a lot of stories on our news roundups.
00:32:08.900If there was one article that I think that, like,
00:32:11.200people truly need to read to understand the scope of it,
00:32:23.620Every single Madison Square Garden security source who spoke to Wired for this piece about Nina said that the dynamic around surveilling her at the garden was excessive.
00:32:35.660Former staffers confirmed that she didn't pose any kind of a threat.
00:32:39.260It's not like she was going places that she shouldn't or trying to access restricted areas.
00:32:43.440She was, in the words of one source, just a very large transgender woman being a fan and walking around.
00:32:50.340So just existing and going to a basketball game was enough.
00:32:55.200But Eversol, according to the lawsuit, had a specific concern.
00:32:59.420He believed that Nina, who is a trans woman, if she appeared in the celebrity seats, which
00:33:05.140is the part of the arena which, you know, famous people sometimes sit and it might show
00:33:10.420up on television broadcasts or in photographs, if she was shown sitting in those seats, that0.81
00:33:15.960it could damage Madison Square Garden's reputation, which is ridiculous.
00:33:20.340And so, on January 10th, 2022, which was Pride Night at the Garden, Madison Square Garden's Threat Management Group produced an 18-page surveillance report about Nina Richards.
00:33:33.860This report includes excruciatingly detailed, time-stamped records of Nina's movements down to the minute.
00:33:41.320Every time she uses the bathroom, every time she gets up, every time she goes to concessions to get a snack or a beer.
00:33:47.060And eventually, Nina was banned for the garden.
00:33:49.540The justification that they gave for her being banned was a stalking allegation.
00:33:53.680But every source who spoke to Wired called this allegation fabricated.
00:33:58.720Again, just like that eBay story, a fabricated threat.
00:34:03.160So I wanted to sort of put these two stories in conversation with each other
00:34:06.920because I think they illustrate very well.
00:34:09.300This is not an isolated thing, as wild as this eBay story sounds.
00:34:13.580It is part of a growing trend where these private companies will do more and more draconian, over-the-top surveillance for just regular people who really haven't done anything wrong.
00:34:27.620So at eBay, you know, you've got this woman journalist being targeted by a team of young women recruited and psychologically broken down by a man with CIA training.
00:34:36.560And at Madison Square Garden, you've got a trans woman fan tracked down to the second by a security apparatus controlled by a man with military intelligence credentials.
00:34:47.760That infrastructure of someone being able to essentially wield a private army pointed at women operated by men who believe that a woman's visibility, whether it's in the press as a journalist or in the celebrity seats at a basketball game, is a threat to be neutralized.
00:35:07.740The CEO of a facial recognition technology company, the one that built Madison Square Garden's surveillance system, told Wired that Eversol is probably our biggest champion across the entire sports industry.
00:35:20.440He said, Madison Square Garden tells the NBA and the NHL what to do, not the other way around.
00:35:26.780This summer, eight different World Cup games will be played at SoFi Stadium in L.A.
00:35:31.440That same facial recognition system is now installed there.
00:35:37.240Wired reports that this system just automatically enrolls faces entering the venue.
00:35:42.820I wanted to mention this because as extreme as all of this sounds, it is not super unique.
00:35:50.260What's different today in 2026 that wasn't the case back in 2019 and all of this stuff was happening
00:35:56.120is the way that things like facial recognition and biometric data collecting that just kind of
00:36:02.440feels like the cost of getting entry into a sporting venue or the cost of getting entry
00:36:07.440into a big concert or the cost of flying, right? I think that we have created a system where we are
00:36:12.660giving more and more and more of our data, of our biometrics over to these private companies
00:36:18.020when we know these private companies are using it in ways that are this draconian and extreme
00:36:23.980up to and including using it to enforce
00:36:51.300unless they happen to look around and see a camera there.
00:36:53.520It's so easy, it's so frictionless, and it becomes so normalized to collect this data. And then at the same time, AI is making it so easy for people to leverage that data, even when they are leveraging it for reasons that they shouldn't be, right?
00:39:00.920for what these executives at eBay did to the Steiners?
00:39:04.740As I said, at the tippy-tippy top level, not really. They got big payouts, big paydays. They were fine. But seven people did plead guilty in connection to this. Jim Baugh, eBay's senior director of safety and security, the CIA guy, the architect of the whole thing, he got 57 months in federal prison.
00:39:25.940David Harville, his deputy, got 24 months.
00:39:29.060Philip Cook, a supervisor of eBay security operations and a former police captain,
00:39:33.400got 18 months in federal prison, three years supervised release, and one year home confinement.
00:39:38.960Stephanie Popp, senior manager of global intelligence,
00:39:41.540her sentence was deliberately set at one year and a day to qualify her for federal prison rather than local jail.
00:39:49.220Veronica Zay, that 25-year-old contractor, the one whose presence in that rented van
00:39:54.460essentially unraveled the entire operation, she got two years probation, including one year home
00:39:59.880confinement. Brian Gilbert, senior manager of special operations, also a former police captain,
00:40:05.500got probation and time served. Stephanie Stockwell, manager of Global Intelligence Center,
00:40:10.480got probation. Something about these sentences, like it does strike me that the people above
00:40:16.240Baugh did not get any jail time or charges whatsoever. And if you believe Baugh's attorneys,
00:40:21.900He was simply responding to this toxic workplace at eBay of, like, paranoia and control and was carrying out this campaign on behalf of his bosses because that was the mandate as he understood it.
00:40:35.100And I just think it's important to note that that is how corporate criminal liability is structured.
00:40:40.260That insulation, him saying that these attorneys rushed in and conducted a quick investigation that just happened to protect the company and the higher ups and throw him under the bus and send him to jail.
00:40:49.960that was not by coincidence that that insulation is the point senior folks set the tone express
00:40:56.440the desire make it clear what they wanted even through some insinuation you know you make it
00:41:02.680clear what it is that you want people to do and then you let the org chart of your organization
00:41:07.640do the work of separating you from the execution so that you keep your hands clean baby nobody
00:41:13.440ever nothing ever gets connected back to you you're gonna walk you're gonna be fine and when
00:41:17.220it all comes falling down, that is what separates you from the consequences. I also think it's worth
00:41:23.700pointing out that two of the seven people who pled guilty are former police captains Brian
00:41:29.100Gilbert and Philip Cook. So these were not like just eBay analysts. eBay's private security
00:41:34.420operation was stacked with former law enforcement. And just like with the Madison Square Garden
00:41:39.980example, the people who are running and building out these private armies, that is with intention.
00:41:46.500They are they are intentionally finding people who have law enforcement connections and backgrounds to do their private bidding.
00:41:53.900And what a long list that was of people who did receive criminal penalties for this.
00:42:15.260Well, that's what I was saying earlier. I simply cannot imagine a scenario where this is a reasonable way to run an organization. I don't get what it got anybody. And not to let anybody off the hook here, because screw all of these people.0.59
00:42:31.100But the fact that you could find seven different people who were just rank and file employees of eBay, just cash and a check, W2 full time employees who would go along with this does make me think that the staffers who testified that eBay was this toxic workplace full of paranoia and control and sleep deprivation and harassment where everybody was screwing everybody and nobody knew what to do.
00:42:59.800That does make me think that must be true, because in what other climate could you find
00:43:06.000seven different independent people who all went along with a harassment campaign this
00:47:14.080Well, the Steiners filed a civil lawsuit in 2021 seeking nearly $500 million in damages against eBay, Wenig, Weiner, and other executives.
00:47:23.940They spent years fighting for their day in court, specifically for Devin Wenig to actually sit in a room, sit in a courtroom, and answer for what happened.
00:47:33.780The trial was originally set for January 5th of 2026, and then Wenig's lawyer asked for a delay.
00:47:40.560He said that he had scheduling conflicts.
00:47:44.460The judge granted that delay anyway and gave them a new date in March of 2026.
00:47:48.900But then, just two days before that trial was set to begin, on February 25, 2026, the case settled.
00:47:56.660However, that settlement is not even fully finalized yet, right now, even of today.
00:48:01.460The deadline to finalize the civil settlement has been extended to May 29, 2026.
00:48:07.840So, depending on when you're listening to this, just a few days from now.
00:48:12.340Now, the reason why that settlement has not closed is because of a dispute between the Steiners and one of their former attorneys.
00:48:19.100So we don't even really know how this whole thing will shake out, like what the settlement will look like between eBay and these executives and the Steiners.
00:48:27.600But what we do know is that Devin Wenig never did have to sit in that courtroom and face any kind of accountability or answer for what happened.0.94
00:48:42.820Well, Jim Ball was scheduled to be released from federal custody in January 2026.0.53
00:48:48.020In a pretty big twist, he ended up cutting a deal with the Steiners in the months before the trial, agreeing to testify against Wenig, the former CEO of eBay, Weimer and the other executives in exchange for being released from the civil suit.0.58
00:49:03.320So he is not involved in the civil suit at all.
00:49:05.960So the man who orchestrated this entire harassment campaign was prepared to take the stand against the bosses who he say gave him the order.
00:49:16.100However, we never got to see that testimony because the case settled first.
00:49:19.560And it makes sense to me because at this point, why continue to goon for these guys?
00:49:24.280Why go down with the ship? You know how it's going to shake out.
00:49:27.400Why not cut a deal and testify against them?
00:49:30.640Right. They threw him under the bus so hard.
00:49:33.460He was a former CIA spook, and now he's in prison for 57 months.
00:51:16.000I guess I did not understand what the Boys and Girls Club was all about.
00:51:19.780They're about doing whatever it takes to get ahead and keep your hands clean.
00:51:24.680Yeah, I thought they were about like supporting children to thrive.
00:51:28.960The Boys and Girls Club is an organization that is like near and dear to my heart.
00:51:32.680But I do feel like I can sort of ding them a little bit because I checked they were aware of this whole harassment campaign and what happened at eBay when they hired this guy.
00:51:44.980It is just Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley.
00:51:47.100It's not like Boys and Girls Club National.
00:51:50.120But I feel that some scrutiny is warranted there.
00:51:53.260As much as I like the Boys and Girls Club,
00:51:55.620I feel comfortable giving them a little bit of scrutiny there1.00
00:51:57.760because, like, what the fuck, Boys and Girls Club?0.99
00:52:00.200Yeah, I kind of thought integrity was part of it,0.99
00:52:03.120not using the power of a major transnational corporation
00:52:08.420to come down on a mom-and-pop newsletter
00:52:11.320that published some unflattering stuff about you personally.
00:52:52.920So in 2024, Devin Wenig co-founded an AI company.
00:52:57.120His company, Symbolic AI, is an AI platform that they say is specifically designed for
00:53:02.400journalists and writers and researchers and communications professionals whose job it
00:53:07.420is to report on powerful people and powerful institutions because they're journalists.
00:53:12.540So this man, who's defining professional legacy, is ordering the destruction of a journalist, has now built a product for journalists and is trying to sell it and market it to journalists.
00:53:26.500And I need to be super clear, like, this guy is in the mix. It's not like he's hiding. He signed a partnership with News Corp. His tools are going into the Wall Street Journal.
00:53:35.520His face and his bio are on the website. His bio, it lists all of his accomplishments at eBay. Things like shareholder returns and growth numbers and the Forbes appearance. It's not like he is obscuring his connection to eBay from his official public-facing bio.
00:53:54.640it simply does not mention the Steiners or e-commerce bites. It does not mention that
00:54:00.900federal prosecutors described the company's conduct under his tenure as absolutely horrific
00:54:05.520and that said prosecutors said that his employees put the victims through pure hell. Of course,
00:54:12.280none of that is in his public-facing bio on this new AI venture.
00:54:16.940Yeah, I can see how that wouldn't help sell stuff. So he's just going to leave it off,
00:54:36.140She is to this day is still covering eBay at Ecommerce Bytes.
00:54:40.160She published a story on eBay just earlier this week on the site.
00:54:43.160As she's doing that somewhere out there, the man who texted, quote, take her down because of something that she wrote, a piece of journalism that she conducted, is in sales meetings, pitching AI tools to newsrooms and journalists and telling editors how his platform can help journalists do better work.
00:55:03.680maybe even pitching things that are meant to like help journalists investigate powerful companies
00:55:08.420like eBay and powerful executives like he was when he ran eBay. So it does kind of seem like he
00:55:16.600kind of got away clean on this one. But never say never. We'll see what happens because if there's
00:55:23.160one thing I know, if you let a man shenanigans, he will shenanigan. So I don't know. Let's keep
00:55:30.260our head on a swivel for this guy. That's kind of the thing. Like, yeah, how could you trust a guy
00:55:36.280like this to, like, go into business with him? I feel like it would require a level of delusion
00:55:41.640like Baugh thinking, oh, it's us versus them and I'm part of us. No, I would never trust this guy.
00:55:49.740I wouldn't trust him with money. I wouldn't trust him with an AI venture. If I was a rich guy,
00:55:54.480I wouldn't invest with him. I don't think I would, like, let him hold a baby. I would keep my eyes
00:55:59.200open on this dude. He also remained on the board of General Motors after all this became public
00:56:06.100and was reelected after it. The shareholders knew all about what happened at eBay. And I just feel
00:56:12.480like that's a little data point about how accountability actually functions or doesn't
00:56:18.380function at this level, because basically it just sounds like this guy just had to ride out this
00:56:25.100scandal, wait for the smoke to clear, and then just sort of went on with his life.
00:56:29.180That might be the most disturbing part of this whole story, that other super rich folks
00:56:35.320saw what he did, they had full knowledge of what he did, and they're like, that's fine.
00:56:40.740Like, you like to imagine that people running these massive companies that run our world
00:56:47.860would have some integrity or have some sense that their great power comes with some responsibility.
00:57:15.460I don't think he's that good of a businessman.
00:57:17.660If that was the calculation that he made
00:57:19.600and was like, this is a reasonable way to do business.
00:57:22.100Your point is a good one, though, because I do think that the message that this sends, that if you do this, you will face no consequences, you'll get millions of dollars and you'll just start a cushy venture elsewhere and like you will not face a single consequence.
00:57:35.040I think it does send a message to every executive or every powerful person who has ever looked at a journalist and thought this person is a problem because the cost of doing something like this is clearly manageable, right?
00:57:50.820You'll have your underlings and your goons do some jail time, but you will get a payout and you will go on to do the next thing.
00:57:58.760And I think basically this case just set an example of if you wanted to do something like this, this is what it costs.
00:58:06.780eBay paid $3 million, which is the statutory maximum.
00:58:11.960So to me, that is the government saying this is as bad as it gets.
00:58:16.860This harassment campaign was as bad as it gets.
00:58:19.360We are going to find you the maximum. That is only $3 million. So if you want to run a harassment
00:58:25.100campaign like this to silence a journalist or silence an enemy or threaten an enemy or a
00:58:29.900perceived threat, this is what it costs, which is nothing. It's very cheap. This is not a sustainable
00:58:36.340way to run a society. So let's continue our tour through accountability or lack thereof.
00:58:46.700So I will say the Justice Department did do something kind of notable here.
00:58:51.680They did not just charge the employees.
00:58:53.940They charged eBay, the company, directly for stalking, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.
00:59:00.800In January 2024, eBay agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty.
00:59:05.820Now, $3 million might sound like a lot, but eBay is a Fortune 500 company, right?
00:59:11.320they have annual revenue in the billions. And think back to the separation payouts that some
00:59:17.420of those folks got in the millions, right? $3 million to eBay is roughly what Wendy Jones1.00
00:59:22.960made in the time it took her to respond to that harassment update with a thumbs up emoji, right?
00:59:29.460It is, in a literal sense, just the cost of doing business for a company like this.
00:59:35.880And just to reiterate, doing business means harassing a couple in Maydenk.
00:59:41.320Yeah, it means sending a live box of spiders to a lovely couple in suburban Massachusetts.
00:59:48.420And again, eBay was fined the statutory maximum.
00:59:52.560That is the most amount of money that the law allowed.
00:59:55.920So this is not really one of those cases where the punishment was kind of lenient relative to what was available.
01:00:02.160This is the system working precisely as it was designed.
01:00:04.900Our system just happens to cap corporate criminal penalties for stalking a journalist at $3 million.
01:00:12.600eBay entered what's called a deferred prosecution agreement.
01:00:15.880So if they comply with the conditions, like accepting an independent monitor for three years, the charges could eventually be dismissed entirely against eBay.
01:00:25.500And for what it's worth, the current CEO of eBay, Jamie Iannan, not the person who was involved in any of this, a different CEO, did say that the conduct was wrong and reprehensible.
01:00:38.320You might be thinking, well, certainly eBay took a financial hit for this.
01:00:44.560eBay's stock price today is roughly where it was in 2019 when all of this was happening.
01:00:50.000So there was no real, like, lasting market consequence for this kind of behavior either.
01:00:55.500And it just kind of feels like the lesson here is that you can run a covert CIA-trained harassment campaign against an independent journalist, just pay a measly little $3 million, which is essentially like a rounding error for a company like eBay, say you're sorry, and then more or less continue operating normally, which means that that is the lesson that every other company and executive watching what happens will probably take away as well.
01:01:23.120The people below you go to jail and you walk.