Six former eBay employees now face charges involving a bizarre cyberstalking campaign that authorities say targeted a Massachusetts couple who published a newsletter that was occasionally critical of the e-commerce site, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced Monday.
The former eBay employees allegedly harassed the Natick, Massachusetts, couple, sending them threatening messages and unwelcome deliveries that included a box of live cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pigs mask, the U.S. attorney’s office said. They also allegedly conducted covert surveillance of the couple.
“To be clear, based on the complaint unsealed today, eBay executives were not just unhappy about the victims’ coverage, they were enraged. One of those executives texted that he wanted to ‘crush this lady,'” he added.
The six former eBay employees then unleashed a “three-part harassment campaign” on the couple, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
In addition to sending the disturbing deliveries, the employees also allegedly took to Twitter to criticize the newsletter and send messages threatening to visit the couple. They also allegedly covertly surveilled the victims in their homes and communities.
Authorities said the employees drove by the victims’ home and at one point two former employees even carried false documents that supposedly showed they were investigating the couple as “persons of interest” who had threatened eBay executives.
Among the six former eBay employees who were charged are the company’s former senior director of safety and security and its former director of global resiliency. All six former employees face charges of conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witness.