Usually the movies portray greedy corporations attacking the little guy by trying to buy their house to build a shopping mall or a skyscraper. They harass them by breaking their windows, paying off local thugs to shake them down, that sort of thing.
But if The Babylon Bee's struggle to stay ahead of real life headlines has taught us anything, real life is so much weirder than fiction.
Take for example the story of Massachusetts couple Ina and David Steiner, who got on the wrong side of the ecommerce giant Ebay.
The Steiners run a newsletter and website called Ecommercebytes made to help Ebay and ecommerce sellers be more successful. A quick scroll through the website's articles suggests that there's little more than that.
However, at times, the newsletter was critical of Ebay's treatment of sellers, and that's when the trouble started.
"We were targeted because we gave eBay sellers a voice and because we reported facts that top executives didn't like publicly laid bare."
One high-ranking Ebay executive, Jim Baugh, started a targeted harassment campaign against the Steiners to make them stop criticizing the company. The harassment was so grievous that Baugh and several Ebay employees are going to prison because of it.
Check out the hell the folks at Ebay put this couple through:
"Baugh and his co-conspirators executed a harassment campaign intended to intimidate the victims and to change the content of the newsletter's reporting. The campaign included sending anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims' home, including a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath and live insects; sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter's content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick; and traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device on their car. The harassment also featured Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims' home."
I can't even imagine living through that.
Joshua Levy the prosecuting U.S. attorney said,
"The company's employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand.
"We left no stone unturned in our mission to hold accountable every individual who turned the victims' world upside-down through a never-ending nightmare of menacing and criminal acts."
Ebay is itself being held criminally liable for their employees' actions paying a $3 million fine, being monitored by a corporate compliance officer for three years, and making significant enhancements to its compliance program.
However, as part of that settlement with the government, none of Ebay's top executives were required to be interviewed or investigated.
The Steiners were somewhat suspect of the U.S. attorney's idea of "leaving no stone unturned."
"In 2022, we were crushed when we learned the government had not interviewed the top executives at eBay as part of its criminal investigation. As victims of despicable crimes meant to destroy our lives and our livelihood, we felt it was vital to do everything in our power to make sure such a thing never happened to anyone else. eBay's actions against us had a damaging and permanent impact on us - emotionally, psychologically, physically, reputationally, and financially - and we strongly pushed federal prosecutors for further indictments to deter corporate executives and board members from creating a culture where stalking and harassment is tolerated or encouraged."
Ebay issued a statement regarding the events as well:
"The company's conduct in 2019 was wrong and reprehensible," said Jamie Iannone, Chief Executive Officer at eBay. "From the moment eBay first learned of the 2019 events, eBay cooperated fully and extensively with law enforcement authorities. We continue to extend our deepest apologies to the Steiners for what they endured. Since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company and eBay has strengthened its policies, procedures, controls and training. eBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners."
They also fired their Chief Communications Officer over the event, though that officer was not charged criminally.
Now that the justice system has had their go and found Ebay guilty, the Steiners are civilly suing the company.
I suspect that settlement will be swift and lucrative for the couple.
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