BOSTON (AP) — eBay Inc. agreed to pay almost $50 million to a Massachusetts couple who said former employees of the company targeted them with threats and bizarre anonymous deliveries — including live insects, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig Halloween mask, according to settlement details released Tuesday.
The parties reached a tentative settlement in February as the case was headed to trial, but they were unable to finalize the agreement. The Steiners asked a federal judge in June to reopen the case, and a new settlement announced Tuesday resolves the litigation.
The agreement with David and Ina Steiner, founders of EcommerceBytes, a newsletter covering the e-commerce industry, includes an additional $7 million in charitable donations, including to organizations supporting First Amendment rights. Attorney Christopher Murphy said the resolution sends “a warning that attempts by big business to suppress speech and the press will not be tolerated.”
“This was not only an attack and campaign of harassment against two people; it was also an attack on free speech and freedom of the press," said Murphy, of Massachusetts-based Scalli Murphy Law.
The settlement contains no confidentiality provision, allowing the Steiners to discuss the case publicly. Murphy said his clients insisted on being able to speak openly about what happened to them.
The settlement resolves more than six years of criminal and civil proceedings stemming from the harassment campaign. In their 2021 lawsuit filed in Boston federal court, the Steiners said that the company engaged in a conspiracy to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them” in order to “stifle their reporting on eBay.” The Natick residents, who report on the e-commerce industry in their newsletter, said they were subjected to cyberstalking, death threats and in-person surveillance by former eBay workers.
The settlement also requires eBay to issue a public statement addressing the conduct of former executives involved in the case.
When the lawsuit was filed, the company said “the misconduct of these former employees was wrong,” and that it would “do what is fair and appropriate to try to address what the Steiners went through.”
eBay reiterated its apology Tuesday, saying, “What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened.” The company also acknowledged “the unprofessional tone in internal communications” by former CEO Devin Wenig, former Chief Communications Officer Steve Wymer and former Senior Vice President Wendy Jones.
The company said the conduct “is not representative of eBay’s culture” and said it has since changed leadership and strengthened its policies, procedures and ethics training.
In 2020, federal prosecutors charged seven former eBay employees, alleging they carried out a coordinated harassment campaign against the couple after becoming angered by coverage in the couple’s online newsletter. Most of the defendants pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy and cyberstalking and were later sentenced to prison terms or home confinement.
In 2024, eBay Inc. agreed to pay a $3 million criminal penalty under a deferred prosecution agreement with federal authorities.
Federal prosecutors have said the harassment included anonymous deliveries of items like live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, and a bloody pig face mask to the couple’s home. The employees also sent pornographic magazines with the husband’s name on them to a neighbor’s home and planned to break into the couple’s garage to install a GPS device on their car.
Under the settlement, the Steiners will receive $48.7 million in compensation, including $46.15 million from eBay, $2 million from former CEO Wenig, $500,000 from former executive Jones and $50,000 from former executive Wymer.
The company will fund $6 million in charitable contributions to various nonprofit organizations, with Wenig contributing an additional $1 million to a charity dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights in Ina Steiner's name.
In a statement, Murphy cited the recovery amount, personal payments by former executives, a commitment for $7 million to go to nonprofits and the absence of a confidentiality provision in a system where “wrongdoers too often hide their misdeeds by dangling compensation in front of those they victimized and trading that compensation for confidentiality or an NDA.”
Protecting journalists and publishers and deterring corporate misconduct were goals from the beginning, he said. "We believe this resolution sends a clear message that corporations and their executives cannot engage in this type of misconduct without facing significant consequences," Murphy said.
FILE - The eBay app icon is seen on a smartphone, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)
A prosecutor said that a teenager who killed two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia carefully plotted the killing specifically to become famous, while a defense attorney argued that the terrible actions were those of a vulnerable and neglected child.
Colt Gray, 16, pleaded guilty last week to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting that also left several others wounded at the school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
The minimum penalty for murder in Georgia is life with the possibility of parole. That leaves Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm trying to decide whether Gray should ever be eligible for parole.
District Attorney Brad Smith told the judge that Gray “cannot be in society.”
“We’ve seen no evidence he has any ability to develop a conscience or any ability ever to fully value human life,” Smith said.
Defense attorney W. Charlton Allen told the judge his client is “not irretrievably broken.” Giving him the possibility of parole would give him “an opportunity of hope," Allen said, adding that without hope, “that takes away the ability for him to change.”
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
Victims of the shooting and family members of those killed conveyed their anger and grief to Primm on Friday, almost all of them asking him to impose a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Shayna Aspinwall, the wife of math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, described “a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind.”
Investigators testified during the sentencing hearing that Gray idolized other mass shooters, talking about them online with other members of the “true crime community,” a group of young people online who are fascinated with such attacks.
Gray had chatted online about gaining notoriety through a school shooting and his admiration for previous mass shooters. There were aspects of his preparation and behavior before and after the Apalachee High School shooting that mimicked other mass shooters, an investigator testified.
Prosecutors played recordings of phone conversations Gray had with his mother, Marcee Gray, from a youth detention center in the months after the shooting. During those calls, he directed his mother to look up what people were saying about him online. When she described “fan art” drawings depicting him or comments people made about him, he asked her how much engagement those posts were getting and seemed excited when they were getting a lot.
“The shooting was not the culmination of the plan. The shooting was just one of the steps of the plan. The plan was ultimate and lifelong fame inside of the TCC,” Smith said, referencing the “true crime community.”
Gray’s maternal grandmother, Debbie Polhamus, testified that the teen had a troubled childhood and that his parents failed him. Her grandson had grown “highly agitated and aggressive” in the weeks before the shooting, she said, adding that she had urged his parents to get him some help but they didn’t follow through.
“I tried to help Colt because nobody else was helping him,” she said.
Polhamus said she visits her grandson once a week at a youth detention center and that he has improved enormously with treatment and medication.
“He’s so much better. Colt was in desperate need of a routine,” she said.
She said her grandson has been doing a lot of reading and wants to go to school and study to get his GED. She urged the judge to allow him a chance at parole.
“I’d like to see him have a chance at some point to prove himself,” Polhamus said.
Candice Broce, director of the state Division of Family & Children Services and commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Services, was called to testify by Colt Gray’s attorney. She managed Gray’s case after he was put in foster care while in detention because he was a minor and his father was in prison. There were also concerns about his mother’s contact with him.
Broce testified that Gray appeared to show improvement while being treated. After Marcee Gray was barred from speaking with her son by a July 2025 no-contact order and he started taking medication, staff at the youth detention center later told Broce it “changed him essentially into a different child,” she said.
“Colt got less stability than he needed, which made him even more vulnerable,” Allen argued, arguing that his client got wrapped up in an online community where he found the acceptance he craved but wasn't getting at home.
Ashley Gilland, an investigator with the Barrow County District Attorney's office, looks over the assault rifle used in the Apalachee High School shooting by suspect Colt Gray during Gray's sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Judge Nicholas Primm reacts during the sentencing for Colt Gray, right, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, reacts during his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, is led in by deputies for his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, talks with his defense attorney Charlton Allen during his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
