What stands out to me is, that the executive person ordering it, Steve Wymer, was not charged at all, despite making very plain statements:
"Wymer texted Baugh that Ina Steiner was a "biased troll who needs to be BURNED DOWN"; that he wanted "to see ashes"; and that Baugh should do "whatever it takes.""
I would imagine the same will happen here(if it was murder). Some pawns get executed, who "missunderstood their orders".
Mafia bosses seems to operate like this as well. They don't give plain orders to kill someone. But their underlings know what is expected of them, by a certain nod or comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle
Seems to go both ways, but without a doubt it gets the animal’s attention.
>The cold, hard facts are that anything is possible.
>Anything, anything. You're just not thinking creatively.
>I have every confidence that you can do that, Phil.
If there would have been a legal angle, they would have send out lawyers letters instead. That was apparently not an option, so crime was the only way to go. And that no one at the top gets prosecuted for this, is quite disappointing.
Or since it was in the US make up some bogus claim and take them to court and hope they cannot afford court proceedings and fold.
We will never know the answer because the chief communication officer choose to contact the security department instead of the legal department.
Court documents show eBay's Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber was copied on the infamous Whatever It Takes email from Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer wherein he referred to the twitter user Fidomaster/unsuckeBay (a frequent commenter and source for the blog) and the owners of the blog and said:
"I am utterly vexed by this! This twitter account dominates our social narrative with his CONSTANT obsession with trolling us. It's more than annoying, it's very damaging. There are a few people (this guy and the eComercebytes gal) infatuated with eBay who have seemingly dedicated their lives to erroneously trashing us as a way to build their own brand - or even build a business. It's genuinely unfair and causes tremendous damage because we look bad fighting back in public and standing up for ourselves. If we could engage, I'd welcome the fight and we have a lot of facts and truth to win with. But, instead we take shots broadside and sit on our powder. This issue gives me ulcers, harms employee moral, and trickles into everything about our brand. I genuinely believe these people are acting out of malice and ANYTHING we can do to solve it should be explored. Somewhere, at some point, someone chose to let this slide. It has grown to a point that is absolutely unacceptable. It's the "blind eye toward graffiti that turns into mayhem" syndrome and I'm sick about it. Whatever. It. Takes."
Oh Huber also engaged in multiple emails back and forth on the topic of Fidomaster/UnsuckeBay in particular as both her and Wymer had attempted to get Twitter to "kill" the account but had been unable to do so because, as mentioned above, there was not a strong legal basis for it.
And in fact at one point when Security Director Jim Baugh said he was investigating to try to identify the person behind the account and was making progress, Oh Huber replied with a smiley emoji and said "Thanks Jim, in light of this, I'll hold off on sending any letter."
Baugh's investigation included creating a fake Twitter account pretending to be an ex-eBay employee who engaged with Fidomaster/unsuckeBay to try to find some "connection" to EcommerceBytes and when that didn't work, part of the plan for escalating to all the crazy deliveries, online harassment and doxing, and in person stalking was a "White Knight Strategy" he hoped could convince the Steiners to "out" Fidomaster/unsuckeBay.
Per Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth B. Kosto:
"The campaign targeted victims one and two for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers. Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter's tone and content and with the tone and content of comments that appeared underneath the newsletter's articles online.
The harassment campaign arose from communications between those senior executives and Mr. Baugh, who was at that time eBay's senior security employee. Mr. Baugh intended for the harassment and intimidation to distract the victims from publishing the newsletter, to change the newsletter's coverage of eBay, and ultimately to enable eBay to contact the victims to offer assistance with the harassment, what the government has called a White Knight strategy.
The White Knight strategy would earn goodwill with the victims, such that they might help eBay learn the identity of Fidomaster, an anonymous online persona who frequently posted negative comments about eBay underneath the newsletter's articles, and thereby allow eBay to discredit both Fidomaster and the victims."
Inexplicably, not only did Oh Huber keep her job after all this, but the entire security department at eBay was moved from Global Ops to Legal after their "internal investigation" into the scandal, putting it under her purview going forward.
Oh Huber has not been named in either the criminal or civil cases in this matter, but last week she did announce she was stepping down to "pursue a new chapter in her career, while exploring personal interests and passions" - which may or may not be related to the $3 Million fine and 3 years of compliance monitoring eBay will undergo as part of a deal they recently struck with the DOJ to try to avoid further criminal prosecution for the company or to the fact that discovery is moving forward in the civil case and more emails or other internal documents could soon become part of the public record.
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-chief-legal-officer-...
https://www.valueaddedresource.net/ebay-cyberstalking-scanda...
The stakes are MUCH higher for Boeing, and we already know quite well that Boeing decided to put many human lives at risk to save money, and that's already resulted in many deaths. And they have a long history of making products designed specifically for killing humans.
https://www.boeing.com/defense
>This trusted partnership continues as defense customers once again look to Boeing to help them solve their toughest challenges.
Faking a suicide isn't a particularly tough challenge.
This sounds like one of those early 2000's trolling moments before such commentary conformed into a blob on modern social media. But given the rest of the events of the '20's I shouldn't be that surprised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal