Former eBay employees sent live cockroaches, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig mask to silence a couple's reporting.

Pat Greenhouse | The Boston Globe | Getty Images

eBay is paying nearly $50 million to a couple its former employees once tried to terrorize into silence. David and Ina Steiner, founders of the e-commerce newsletter EcommerceBytes, will receive $48.7 million total, including $46.15 million from eBay itself and personal payments from three former executives, the AP reports.

The harassment began after the Steiners’ coverage in 2019 of a lawsuit involving eBay and Amazon. Unhappy with the story, then-CEO Devin Wenig texted a subordinate, saying of Ina Steiner, “take her down.” What came next was anonymous deliveries of live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, a bloody pig mask, even a plan to secretly track the couple’s car with GPS.

The new settlement includes $7 million earmarked for charity and, notably, no confidentiality clause, meaning the Steiners are free to discuss what happened publicly. “We hope that this case will serve as a deterrent,” Ina Steiner said. eBay said the conduct was “wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened.”

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