Former eBay security head pleads guilty to harassing Massachusetts couple

A former eBay Inc. executive pleaded guilty Monday to his role in a harassment campaign targeting a Massachusetts couple who published a newsletter that the company's executives viewed as critical of the company. 

James Baugh, 47, of San Jose, California – eBay's former senior director of safety and security – pleaded guilty in a federal court in Boston to one count of conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts of witness tampering, and two counts of destruction and alteration and falsification of records in a federal investigation. 

In June 2020, Baugh was arrested and charged alongside David Harville, eBay’s former director of global resiliency. 

MASSACHUSETTS COUPLE HARASSED BY EBAY TELL THEIR STORY

Co-conspirators and former eBay employees Philip Cooke, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Popp, Veronica Zea and Stephanie Stockwell all previously pleaded guilty.

Baugh's sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 29, 2022. He faces decades in prison if he receives the maximum sentence. 

The campaign arose from communications between the eBay executives and Baugh between approximately August 2019 and August 2020.

"Baugh and his co-conspirators allegedly executed a three-part harassment campaign intended to intimidate the victims and to change the content of the newsletter’s reporting," the Justice Department said. "The campaign included sending anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content, and threatening to visit the victims in Natick and traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device on their car."

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The deliveries included a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects, according to federal documents.

The harassment also featured Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims’ home.

"I started getting harassed online through Twitter, through unwanted e-mail subscriptions … And, these were really disturbing e-mails," Ina Steiner told ABC News' "Good Morning America" last August. 

"We got a phone call from a shop in Arizona that said that they couldn't deliver the wet specimen that we had ordered. Not having any idea what a wet specimen was, I asked her. She said it was an embalmed pig fetus," her husband, David Steiner, added.

The Twitter messages were written as if they had been sent by eBay sellers who were unhappy with the victims’ newsletter – EcommerceBytes – and some posted the Steiners' address and threatened to visit their home. 

On Aug. 15, 2019, Baugh and co-conspirators allegedly traveled from California to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device. 

The Steiners spotted the surveillance team and contacted local police. 

Authorities said Baugh, after learning of the investigation, made false statements to police and internal investigators, deleted digital evidence related to the cyberstalking campaign and falsified records.

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The Steiners sued eBay and several employees last summer, including then-CEO Devin Wenig. Wenig was not criminally charged, has denied any knowledge of the harassment campaign, and his lawyers have asked that the Steiners' claims against him be dismissed.

He stepped down from his position in September 2019.

The lawsuit has been stayed, according to court records. 

The e-commerce giant has apologized to the couple and said it fully cooperated with the law enforcement investigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.