There Are No Girls on the Internet - eBay's Criminal Stalking Campaign Against a Journalist Was Run by Ex-Cops. They Nearly Got Away With It. 

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

This is part 1 of a 2-part arc about one of wildest tech stories I've seen in a long time. For over two decades, a husband and wife duo have been publishing EcommerceBytes, a respected trade publication for eBay sellers. But in 2019, someone started harassing them. It began with a spray painted fence, then quickly escalated to death threats and fetal pigs and a mysterious van outside their house. Eventually, they discovered that eBay's own security team was behind it all, with the campaign put into motion by then-CEO Devin Wenig. This bizarre and frightening story is a cautionary tale about the rise of private armies. It starts in San Francisco, takes us to the small community of Natick, Massachusetts, and ultimately takes TANGOTI listeners right back to Madison Square Garden. Buckle up.      Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Because I think it shows the lengths to which some tech leaders will go, not just to make money or have their company succeed or have their make money or to have them make money personally, but how far they will go to enact personal vengeance. And I think it makes clear that an increasing amount of the scaffolding that our tech landscape is built on is actually built up around things like vengeance and personal animosities. So, Mike, come along with me on the eBay harassment story. Before we get started, is this a story that you remember? This is a story that I very vaguely remember

like seeing a headline about it or something. But I had no idea how wild of a story it was until looking over these notes that you put together. I don't understand how this was not

like a much bigger story with like a fictionalized movie and a documentary about Well, it does have a documentary, but it reads, like the story, it's so cinematic. If I didn't know it really happened, I would think it was fictional because it reads like something from a movie. So let's get into it. Our story starts with a couple in Natick, Massachusetts,

which is a kind of a quiet, sleepy suburb of Boston. I know Natick well. When I went to college at Northeastern, it was just, you know, out the commuter rail a couple of stops. So Ina and David Steiner have lived in Natick for decades. They've been married for 30 years. They work from home together, which I guess depending on the vibe of your relationship and how your home is built, could either be the dream or a nightmare. But for them, for the Steiner's, they make it work because they've built something together as pioneers of the early internet.

Starting way back when in 1999, which this is still very much the early days of the internet, but especially for folks trying to build a real business online, they launched a newsletter to help people buy and sell things on eBay. If you weren't around in 1999, the idea that somebody would be making money or starting a business on the internet in 1999 was still very novel, right? Oh, definitely.

E-commerce was like not really a thing. The internet was still so new. You know, we were all figuring out what it was even supposed to be. And so there were, I think there were a lot of people like this who, you know, just started a newsletter or a website or something because it was related to something that they were interested in and there just wasn't anybody else doing it. So they just started it.

I think that was like a pretty common thing back in those days. of the early internet. That's exactly what the Steiner's did. So their newsletter originally was called auction bites, but eventually it became e-commerce bytes. And over the years, they're able to grow this into a real trade publication. It becomes kind of a trusted source

for people who either build businesses selling things on eBay or have a passion for buying things on eBay. If you are a buyer or a seller or somebody who uses eBay in a real way, this is like a trade publication for you to understand eBay policies, what's going on with eBay. Ina is responsible for all of the reporting and David handles the business side. They cover marketplace news, policy changes, seller complaints, platform decisions for an audience of people whose actual livelihoods depend on knowing the ins and out of how eBay works. So this is one of those stories where if I just stopped here, we just have a sweet story of a husband and wife duo working from her.

home, running a business together in a charming New England town. Yeah, it's a nice story. Except for, in the summer of 2019, one of the most powerful tech companies in the world decided that Ena Steiner needed to be,

and I'm quoting directly from an executive text message here, quote, burned down. Burned down. That is some extreme language from a publicly traded company about an individual person. Yes, get ready for some extreme language, put in text message and emails all over the

story. Because what happened next is just one of the most unhinged, also just disproportionate and genuinely terrifying corporate scandals I have ever encountered. And I'm saying that as somebody who covers the dregs of technology for a living every week. Wow. All right. Buckle up, I guess. So where should we start? Who are these people? So the Steiner's are just normal people. I cannot stress that enough. The Steiner's are not journalists at the New York Times, right? They don't have a team of lawyers. They don't really have institutional backing. They just started their newsletter because they were eBay fans and early adopters of eBay.

There are folks who just genuinely loved the platform of eBay and wanted to help other sellers navigate it effectively. So over time, e-commerce bytes becomes one of the go-to resources for folks who sell stuff for a living on eBay, small business owners, vintage resellers, collectors, and everyday folks trying to make ends meet. Ina is actually a member of the Online News Association, Me Too, and then other organization for writers called investigative reporters and editors. She even wrote a book about all of this called Turn eBay Data into Dollars, published by McGraw-Hill in 2006. she really built herself up into this trusted voice on e-commerce. She's been quoted in The New York Times, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal. And I feel like even that on its own is an impressive and interesting story, like, of its own right.

It is, yeah. You know, I mentioned earlier that a lot of people were doing similar stuff, like back in the early days of the Internet, starting newsletters or, you know, web pages about things they were interested in because it was. so new that stuff didn't exist. And it's true that a lot of people did that, but not many of them persisted 20 years later to become trusted brands that are continuing to thrive. So I totally agree. I think that's really impressive. They were able to do that. I took a look at their website before this recording just to see what it was like, and it's still active. They're publishing

stories every couple days. The design of their website is very sharp. like still early World Wide Web a little bit. But, you know, the content looks very solid. And it's just cool to see something that really does have the feel of being a relic from that earlier time when people could just make their own thing. You know, like today it would be a substack, which would be totally fine. But there is something cool about it still being this, having that same DIY, early internet, early eBay feel and to see it really succeeding today. It's cool. Yeah, I like that it still feels

very Web 2.0. Yeah, exactly. So you might think from where this story is going that her coverage of eBay was like some kind of an anti-Ebay crusade because that would make more sense. Not to say that I would think that was okay, like an okay thing to do, but you might be thinking, oh, she's someone who is very anti-Ebay, and that's why eBay hated her so much. Not so. She covered eBay the way any trade publication would cover any company, factually, critically been warranted, and really trying to ground it in the needs of her audience who were eBay sellers. So if eBay raised their fees, she reported about it.

If eBay changed a policy that might hurt small sellers, she reported about that too. If eBay executives were getting massive pay packages while the platform struggled, well, she reported on that too, and that is sort of what started this whole thing. But ENA is, by any reasonable definition, just a journalist covering a beat, doing what journalists are meant to do. And eBay did not like it. So as early as 2018, a full year before things got truly criminal, eBay's then CEO, Devin Wenig, was complaining about e-commerce bites to his communications team. And we know all of this because

it's in court documents. His subordinates were promising to, quote, clap back at Ena and F with her. Just putting it right into writing. Yeah, I was going to say, this is one of those stories where so many things that should not be in writing are in writing, and it's probably one of the reasons why this story has captivated me so much because

you don't really need to guess when you put things in writing. So this guy, the eBay's then CEO, Devin Wenig, he is a central character to everything. He was kind of a big deal then. He ran eBay from 2015 to 2019. During his tenure at eBay, he was named one of America's most 100 innovative leaders by Forbes, one of technology's highest rated CEOs by Glass Door, Bay Area's favorite CEO by the San Francisco Chronicle, and his bio kind of reads like a greatest hits of Silicon Valley Prestige.

So he was a big deal. He was also, according to years of court documents and testimony, the person who set in motion what a federal prosecutor would eventually call, quote, absolutely horrific criminal conduct. Even though he was this big tech eBay big wig, by the spring of 2019, eBay had hit kind of a rough patch. In January 2019, an activist hedge fund called Elliott Management bought a significant stake in eBay and sent a public letter to the board of directors. That letter said that eBay had, quote, underperform both its peers and the market for a prolonged period of time and called for major changes within the company, which many inside eBay interpreted as a threat to the then CEO Weneg's job.

Okay, I could see how that would create some pressure then for Wenig. Yeah, it sounds like he's on the chopping block, he's feeling that pressure. Because Elliott management, was essentially staging a corporate raid. And Devin Wenig, the Forbes-Lotted Glass Door celebrated CEO, now kind of has a target on his back from his own investors. So this is the atmosphere, an atmosphere of pressure and paranoia, when Ina Steiner publishes a story on her newsletter about how eBay CEO, Devin Wenig, his compensation was 152 times that

of a typical eBay employee's salary. I was like really shocked when I read that number. Just for context, I was curious, is that typical for a CEO? And it turns out that that pay disparity of him making 152 times more than the average worker his own company, that's actually smaller than the national average for companies,

the S&P 500. Because apparently they're all required to disclose that information. So it's just like public information, how much everybody makes. According to the AFL-CIO's executive pay watch tracker, 2024, the average CEO to worker pay ratio was 285 to 1. Wow. Almost twice winnings, which is just mind-boggling, you know? I'm glad that you phrased it that way because this was public information.

And so when Ena published it, it wasn't like she got this information through like, dive or investigative journalist, it's public, as you said. And it was exactly the kind of story that Ena had been writing for like 20 years about eBay and the people who run the platform. But Wenig's chief communications officer, a man named Steve Weimer, sent his boss, Ina's article about his salary being so high. And alongside it, he added, quote, we are going to crush this lady. A month later, Wenig texted back, quote,

take her down. It's like Obama ordering seal team six to take out Osama bin Laden. Yes. Except they're talking about a woman who writes a blog in Natick. Exactly. So now you've got the CEO putting in writing, take her down, in direct response to his comms chief saying, we're going to crush this lady.

Weiner takes that take it down text as a kind of mandate and escalates it directly to the head of eBay security. a man named James Baugh. He's going to come up a ton more on this episode. So when Weimer, the comms chief gets to James Baugh, the language they use to talk about this situation gets even uglier. He calls Ena a, quote, biased troll who needs to get all caps burned down. He says he wants to see ashes.

He tells Ba' eBay's head of security to, quote, do whatever it takes. Why they keep talking about burning her? It's like she's a witch or something. Yeah, it's pretty bad. Weimer also sends Ba a separate message, quote, if we're ever going to take her down, now is the time.

Again, all of this because she shared compensation data that was already public information. Yeah, seems pretty disproportionate and probably not even legal. I don't know. I guess we're going to get into that. So what can you tell us about James Baugh?

So to understand this story, you really have to understand who this guy is and what he's about. Ball was eBay's Senior Director of Safety and Security. Before that, he worked at Microsoft. Before that, and this came out during the sentencing. Baugh and his attorneys claimed that he had worked with the CIA's National Clandestine Service, and he claimed in letters to the court that even after he went into the private sector, that he continued doing covert work for the FBI and the CIA. I should say, I've seen a little bit of buzziness around this,

whether or not he actually did do work for the CIA or the FBI, but that's what he says. I feel like people who do covert work for the CIA don't typically talk about it like this, but what the hell do I know? I mean, have you done covert work for the CIA? No, I haven't, wink, wink. Or have I? Honestly, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about this story now is because you probably remember a few weeks ago, we did a story on the news roundup about Madison Square Gardens head of security based on some really deep reporting from Wired about how these big private companies are hiring people who formerly either worked with or had some ties to the government as CIA or FBI. and then they get hired on to be the head of security for these big private companies

and more or less become personal mercenaries for these private companies where the guys who run the companies want to punish or spy on their perceived personal enemies and then these heads of securities with these potential like CIA or FBI or government ties then do that on behalf of these executives. As they put it in that wired article about Madison Square Garden, we're in the time of personal armies now. So scary. There's some humor to the absurdity of this giant corporation

going after these two people as like a little mom and pop outlet. It is absurd and it's kind of funny in that regard. But like this idea about the rise of personal private armies surveilling and punishing the perceived enemies of the rich is like really scary stuff. I mean, it's exactly what President Trump is doing. The Wired article makes very clear that this is not an isolated thing, that this is becoming more and more the norm. So us regular folks who do not have, you know, personal goons on retainer or whatever

should expect that this is going to become more and more. more commonplace. And you have no idea what the thing could be that gets you on the shit list of these incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful, incredibly well-connected people that have essentially their own personal goon who can do whatever, right? I'm sure the Steiner's didn't think by just reporting publicly available information about compensation at eBay that they were going to then be the targets of this very long, very intense, harassment campaign that was illegal, right? Like they, in the Madison Square, we'll get into it soon, but in the Madison Square

Garden article, ordinary people do small things that you would never expect would wind you on the enemy's list of somebody rich and powerful, but that is exactly what is happening. Yeah, that's such a good point. You know, but in both that Madison Square Garden story and also this one, it doesn't seem like these people became targeted. because they had violated some sort of actual rule that the institution had. It wasn't about like some kind of institutional transgression

or crime or something. It was just like the personal feelings of some powerful executive who didn't like the look of them and was just trying to deal with whatever psychological stuff was going on inside their executive head. Like it sounds like Steneg here was really, facing a lot of pressure about this potential takeover. And going after e-commerce bites,

it almost seems more like an outlet for rage than a strategic communications move. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So much of this seems like built on personal hostilities, some paranoia, you know, just a real, like taking out whatever feelings you might have or anxieties you might have on the job, all these people who really didn't deserve it and really didn't do anything wrong.

We probably all had the experience of working with like a coworker or acquaintance or someone who maybe doesn't have the best emotional management and takes out their frustration and pettiness on other people around them. And that's pretty annoying when it happens. But it's probably like especially annoying and even dangerous when that person makes 150 to 300 times more than you, right? And just has like that many more resources to put towards prosecuting

whatever petty grievance they've decided they want to take to the bank. Yeah, imagine your pettiest, most obnoxious boss you've ever had. What if that boss had at his disposal on retainer a hired goon who would, quote, do whatever it takes? Yeah, that would not be cool. But that head of security for eBay, according to his own lawyers,

said that he felt relentless pressure from Weneg, the CEO of eBay, and other executives to deal with the Steiner problem, and that he took that pressure very seriously in the way that a guy who has a background in covert intelligence operations takes pressure seriously. So he gathered his team, and that team, started to plan. Let's take a quick break. My SUV is worth more than ever. Time to upgrade. There's never been a better time. At Plaza Auto Group locations get top value for your trade and shop hundreds of new and pre-owned vehicles

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One thing I haven't really gotten into yet is that the harassment of the Steiner's was not just about punishing Ena for what she had written. There was a second target, an anonymous one. Because for months, there was a commenter on the e-commerce and Byte's website that had been driving these eBay executives absolutely crazy. This person posted under the handle FIDOMaster and then later changed it to unsuck eBay, which I love. Again, very early internet vibes. Yeah.

And this person would post critical commentary about eBay's layoffs, their executive pay, its management structure and shakeups all over the Steiner's website and across Twitter. eBay could not identify this poster. They were unable to get Twitter to kill the account, probably because this account was not breaking any rules by just commenting about eBay. eBay's own lawyers told them that they did not have a legal case against this commenter,

and that basically there was nothing that they could do within the law, I mean, because luckily, these are not people who feel they need to operate within the law. So Jimba, eBay's senior director of safety and security, had a different idea. What if they could get the Steiner's to out this anonymous commenter? So they put a plan in motion.

This plan actually had a code name. They called it the White Knight Strategy. And here's how it worked. So Ba's team would harass the diners anonymously to scare them and destabilize them and make them feel very unsafe in their own homes. They would do this in their unofficial capacity like off the books on the hush.

then in their official capacity, eBay security would swoop in and offer to investigate the harassment. So they would kind of come to the rescue as a white knight, hence the name, earn the Steiner's trust, and then use that trust to get the Steiner's to cooperate and unmasking this commenter, phytomaster. It is a kind of diabolical plan, I really have to say. So their plan is to manufacture the threat, swoop in as the savior, and then extract the information that they want. That kind of dynamic to me really resembles the kind of tactic that you often see associated with intelligence operations where you're lying, misleading, manufacturing fake threats, and then being like, oh, well, now you have to work with us because there's this threat that we actually manufactured. Yeah, coercive, dishonest. Doesn't really sound super legal.

Yikes. But I guess why else have hired Goons, right? Goon's going to goon. Goon's going to goon. The U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case called the White Knight Strategy, specifically targeting an anonymous source through the journalist who was protecting them, quote, abhorrent to First Amendment values, and I absolutely agree. Yeah, right.

That makes it even worse that they were doing all of this, not just to get the Steiner's, but to uncover their anonymous journalistic source. So what else was part of this white night campaign? How did it all go down? So it started in June 2019, David Steiner, the husband of this husband-wife eBay newsletter, goes outside and he finds a word spray-painted in black across his brand new white fence. Fido Master. Oh, man.

It's such a dramatic visual. And then the reveal of the word is like, again, just like a little absurd. The whole thing is absurd. If you ran a newsletter and you came outside of your house and somebody had spray painted the name of a commenter on that newsletter on your fence, I would honestly just be so confused. Yeah, like what? Like, what is going on? What are they trying to tell me? So that whole thing was eBay.

Specifically, it was a senior eBay security manager named Brian Gilbert. He drove to Natick and defaced the Steiner's property. Afterward, Baugh texted Weimer that his team had given the Steiner's, quote, a tap on the shoulder. Weimer seemed to express approval and he did not ask questions. So I guess this is meant to be sort of the first tap of the harassment campaign. but then the digital component of it begins in earnest. Because the Steiner start getting bombarded with unwanted newsletter subscriptions, things like subscriptions to the Sin City Fetish Night,

or the Satanic Temple, or the Communist Party of the United States, or the irritable bowel syndrome patient support group. This was all coordinated. Someone at eBay was sitting at a computer, signing Ena and David Steiner up for newsletters, specifically designed to disturb and humiliate them. This feels like such a low effort, low-tech method of harassment. Like, I'm sure it was annoying and bad to endure,

but I guess I would expect a crack team of ex-intelligence officers to have some, like, more sophisticated tricks than signing people up for unwanted newsletters. Their tactics do escalate, but the, Early tactics do sort of seem a little bit, what's sort of looking for? A little bit low effort. Yeah, the early tactics do seem a little bit low effort to me. But then come some DMs on Twitter, like threatening and explicit DMs, things like shut up or else.

The DMs were vulgar enough that when the Steiner's were on 60 minutes, they were talking about the harassment, and they said that most of the DMs they were getting could not be shown on television. So as if that's not bad enough, then it gets physical. The Steiner's get a voicemail from somebody saying that they could not fulfill an order for a wet specimen. David calls back and he's like, what is a wet specimen? A wet specimen, it turns out, is a preserved dead animal in formaldehyde. So this order was for a fetal pig. Like one of the fetal pigs that you would dissect in high school biology class? I think so. I think eBay was trying to send this couple a dead beetle pig to scare them because of their eBay newsletter.

This is where things get really diabolical because David Steiner gets sent in the mail a book called How to Grieve the Loss of a Spouse. Oh, yice. That is a big escalation. So they told 60 Minutes that they pretty understandably interpreted this as a death threat. And this sort of seems to start a death theme. They also get a funeral wreath delivered to their door. They get things like boxes of live spiders, boxes of live cockroaches. Then also, pornographic magazines that are addressed to David, but delivered to their neighbor's houses,

specifically to humiliate him in front of people that he knew. Oh, okay. Yeah. So this is really escalating now from unwanted, newsletter subscriptions to implicit death threats, boxes of live spiders, and borderline sexual harassment. I don't know if that counts as sexual harassment or not, but like sexual something, really escalating.

Yeah, it really escalates from here. Ina described opening a package to 60 minutes. She opens the package, and she said that it looked like it was full of hair and flesh. And this happened while a police officer who had come to take a report was stifference. standing right there. When she opened this package, she said that her immediate thought, even before she knew who was behind it or what was going on, was what are they going to do next? So as this was

all beginning, the Steiner's start setting up security cameras all over their home, ring cameras and outdoor cameras. The digital component of the harassment really kind of ramps up from here. Their home address gets posted online with fake announcements for things like yard sales and sex parties, basically inviting strangers to show up at their house. What strikes me about this is how eBay was kind of using the Steiner's own community against them. You know, this was harassment that was meant to humiliate them along, often sexual lines in front of their neighbors and destabilize whatever trust or, like, perception that their

neighbors might have had of them. And also destabilize whatever sense of privacy that they might have. Like, this stuff happening at your house makes you. you feel like you have no safe space and no private life and no way out? Yeah, that would be terrifying. Well, as if that's not bad enough, then comes the physical surveillance. So Ba, that head of eBay security, personally flew from California to Boston with two other eBay employees.

They rent a van and they registered for a fake software development conference as a cover story. They drive to Natick and they follow the Steiner's around their neighborhood. And again, this also takes me back to the Madison Square Garden wired piece. The level of surveillance that Madison Square Garden security team was expected to do on just regular people who attended events at the garden is absurd to me. One of the anecdotes in the piece is that a former Knicks player went to a game at the garden and then Madison Square Garden Security was meant to tail him and follow him, even as he traveled hundreds of miles from Madison Square Garden,

which, again, I don't know, like maybe I'm naive or I don't know how business works, but I simply cannot conceive of a world where this is a reasonable way to run a business. I simply do not understand, like, what is it getting them to send a team of goons cross-country to do physical surveillance and harassment of one couple running a newsletter, I simply cannot wrap my head around that. For me, I think it's one of those things where the explanation is that it's all about

the psychological needs of the guy who happens to be in charge, really nothing to do with the well-being of the company or approving the company's bottom line. Because that's got to be expensive. Sending a whole team of goons across country, renting surveillance vans coming up with fake cover stories. That is a lot of work for this one couple for just running a newsletter.

Yeah, you got to pay for travel for the goons. You got to feed them. You got to put them up in a hotel. I like to imagine that the goons are very specific and exacting in their needs. They're like, the goons must stay in a hotel that looks like this. Here's our goon rider. You think they have a goon rider? I mean, if you're a hired goon, I feel like you could make some, I mean,

It depends how good of a goon you are. If you're like a top goon, yeah, you can probably command all kinds of special conditions. And I think this is why this story sticks with me, because it also really pierces the veil of this idea that people who run tech companies are very efficient and very good at like using resources and money in time. And they know how to, you know, we should all be looking to them and listening to them about how our time and resources and money are spent. This does not seem like a very good use of resources or resources. time to me. Seriously, all these tech companies doing layoffs, maybe they should take a good, hard look at the

Goon Department. What's the Goon budget? Yeah. Yeah, what kind of overhead you've got running on goons? More after a quick break. My SUV's worth more than ever. Time to upgrade? There's never been a better time. At Plaza Auto Group locations, get top value for your trade and shop

hundreds of new and pre-owned vehicles across 11 locations. And if you can't come to us, we'll come to you. With best in class pricing, unbeatable trade values, and 70 years of trust, it's easy to see why families choose the Plaza Auto Group. Plaza Auto Group, celebrating 70 years family owned and operated. Visit Plaza Auto Group.com. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, I hearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your. message. Plus only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football, it's home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed?

I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game.

It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network,

available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression.

I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. So these goons, when they get to Natick, they try to break into the Steiner's garage to install a GPS location tracker on their vehicle. They're watching them in person. This is senior executives at a Fortune 500 company staking out a couple's home in suburban

Massachusetts because that couple was writing about the company on their mom-and-pop newsletter. Seems pretty weird when you say it like that. Yes. At one point in the middle of the night, a pizza gets delivered, like the eBay executives ordered pizzas to their house as part of this harassment campaign. And David Steiner said he genuinely thought it might be a hitman. Like that is how that is that is the level to which this had escalated. That must have been so scary for these two.

And at this point they had no idea what was going on or why this was happening to them yet. Because again, eBay's plan was to just destabilize them and terrify them. And then eBay was going to swoop in and be like, oh, we can help. That's got to be like a terrible form of harassment when you have no idea who is harassing you or why. And they're also sending death threats. Yeah, that would be terrifying. So let's talk about how this plan started to fall apart. It really was because of David Steiner.

Steiner notices that he is being followed. He sees this van. So he gets out and he takes a picture of the license plate and calls the cops. The cops run the plate, and they're able to trace those plates back to a rental car agency where a woman named Veronica Zay, an eBay intelligence analyst who was 25 years old at the time, had flown in from San Jose and signed for this vehicle. And the whole thing starts unraveling from there. That's really the detail that is the linchpin of them figuring out what was going on.

I can only imagine how David Steiner felt when he learned that it was actually, eBay employees who were behind all of this? I feel like if I'm David Steiner, in a million years, I would never, I'm probably thinking, did I cut somebody off in traffic? You know, of all the places my mind would go, I feel like eBay would be the last place. I mean, I'm thinking now, I mean, heaven forbid, if I was at the center of this kind of harassment campaign, I guess I've made some enemies now that I'm speaking out loud. I guess I've made some enemies.

But you could just cross-check against your enemies list. You know, who it probably would be, the Hello app or Mark Wahlberg or Chris Pratt. I got enemies, man. I could imagine that movie where like Mark Rulberg and Chris Pratt are racing against each other to take you down first. Tell him to come and get me. I'm ready. Okay, so they were able to trace the van back to an analyst at eBay, and that started unraveling this whole thing. What else was revealed? How did it all come out?

Let's talk about the people who actually carried out Operation White Knight, because there are some details about this whole operation that I think are important and that are kind of central to understanding how this operation was meant to work. So you might think that somebody like Ba, that head of security at eBay, would, you know, potentially having these like CIA government ties would amass a group of like hardened operatives. That's probably what you're thinking, right? Yeah, I'm picturing some like hard looking guys like covered tattoos, military experience, you know, grizzled look. stubble, smoking cigarettes. That's what I'm picturing in this movie. How accurate is that? Not accurate at all, because you're probably not picturing young women in their 20s,

women like Veronica Zay, that eBay intelligence analyst. Those are the kinds of people that he amassed as his team, a team of mostly young women. So this guy who has this CIA background tasked with running a covert harassment campaign, specifically recruited young female analysts to do this work, and he calls them Jim's Angels. I guess it's like a play on Charlie's Angels, only instead of helping people out, they are harassing a married couple.

Yes, pretty much. This is just me extrapolating. I obviously don't know these guys, but I bet he loved the I, idea of amassing a group of young women and then giving them this nickname Jim's Angels that frames them as his like personal accessories. And then according to Veronica Zay's testimony at sentencing, breaking them down through coercive control. Because according to statements made during sentencing, some employees described an environment of sexual harassment, sleep deprivation, routine exposure

to graphic and violent content. According to this testimony, this, coercive control and harassment was key to, like, breaking these young women down and convincing them to do this kind of bidding. According to her testimony, Veronica Zay, who was 25 years old when she was working as an analyst at eBay, was like, I don't know how I came to be using a prepaid card to avoid a paper trail while buying living insects and shipping them to this couple. I can see how in retrospect as, like, you know, a digital analyst, looking back on those activities, she would have questions about, like, you know,

maybe I shouldn't have done that. So she's the one who's renting the van, flying to Boston. At her sentencing, she described a workplace culture so toxic and so deliberately destabilizing that she struggled to explain how she wound up doing any of it. So I do believe her here that this guy probably was a, like, controlling creep who like little mind games,

but also what a convenient thing for her to say at a sentencing hearing. Very true, very, very true. So you've got this guy, this head of security at eBay, using young women basically as instruments of a campaign to make a couple, including another woman, feel unsafe in her own home. Like the women in this story are either the target or the weapon. That's a good and sad observation.

And it brings me no joy to report this, but while the women who carried out some of these actions either went to jail or house arrest or probation, the men who gave the orders walked away with tens of millions of dollars. Infuriating. Truly. So let's hold it there because next week, we're going to talk about what happened to some of those men.

And I want to warn you, it's probably not what you might be thinking. You might be thinking jail or consequences. No, one of them is literally mixed up in AI as we speak. Oh, man, of course. I'm sure there is a huge market for private security, AI, surveillance, vengeance as a service. There certainly is because one of these men, one who got 24th, four months in federal prison for his role in all of this, was actually hired by the man who runs Madison Square Garden, whose own head of security vouched for his, quote, extreme integrity and

highest moral standards shortly before he went to prison for stalking a blogger with live cockroaches. Oh, man, we're looping back around to Madison Square Garden. We certainly are. Stay tuned. I will see you next week. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's that time to put on your jersey and wave your flag, whoever you root for. Why do I watch the walk up? That's like asking me, why do I breed? And it's beautiful. The guys are young and cute and fit. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I like watching it with my dad.

It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. Listen to American Football on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence.

Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Open your free IHeart Radio app search Joy 101 and listen now. Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby is presented by CVS. Everyone sees me as a football player, but before anything else, I'm human. Every single day I'm still learning how to live with problems, mistakes, relationships, emotions ever since I was born.

This isn't a normal podcast. Everything here is spontaneous, real and genuine, just honest conversations about what it means to be alive. I'm Javier El Chichariot Hernandez and listen to learning to be here. Human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most sciencey episodes for your peer review with our new stuff you should know doing science playlist. Out now.

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