"To Write Favorable Articles"... US DOJ Charges eBay Employee with Stalking Allegations

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted six employees of the e-commerce company eBay on charges of stalking an operator of a newsletter critical of the company.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 15th (local time), the six indicted employees were found to have engaged in cyberstalking by sending packages containing live cockroaches, blood-stained pig masks, fly larvae, and making threats through social media platforms.

The victims are a woman and her husband who have been running an e-commerce-related newsletter in Boston, Massachusetts, primarily covering news related to eBay and Amazon.

The six indicted eBay employees obtained the couple's home address and posted it on Craigslist, a housing and secondhand goods advertisement site, causing people to visit their home at all hours. Some of them reportedly traveled from Western California to the East Coast, where the couple lives, to surveil them and even attempted to install GPS tracking devices on their car.

The prosecution stated that the six eBay employees harassed the couple to prevent them from writing negative articles about eBay. They tried to intimidate the couple anonymously and sought to make them favor eBay by providing assistance.

Additionally, the prosecution revealed that an eBay executive sent a text message to an employee saying, "We will destroy this woman."

eBay said that after being notified by the police last August about suspicious behavior by personnel in the security department, it immediately conducted an investigation and dismissed all involved parties.

eBay stated, "This behavior is unacceptable," and "We sincerely apologize to the victims and regret being involved in such an incident."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.