One of the most explosive Silicon Valley scandals of all time was a poorly run, easily discovered scheme inspired by a 1980s teen comedy, conducted by a company long past its heyday to harass a mom and pop blog.
“We are going to crush this lady,” Wenig texted Steve Wymer, eBay’s former communications chief in April 2019, after one critical blog posted on EcommerceBytes’ website, the Times reported.
After Steiner wrote a story last August about a lawsuit eBay filed against Amazon, Wenig fired off a text to Wymer just over a half hour after the blog post went up, the Times said: “If you are ever going to take her down. . now is the time. “
In addition to reenacting “Johnny Be Good” — sending $70 of unwanted pizzas, the cockroaches, the Craigslist ad and everything else — eBay’s security team decided to stalk the bloggers, the Times reported.
Worried about getting caught, eBay’s security team started sending one another emails to make it appear that they were just discovering some of the harassment aimed at the bloggers, the Times reported.
They also brainstormed cover stories, erased information from their phones and tried to stonewall eBay’s internal investigation team.
But they were quickly discovered. Wymer was fired. Wenig resigned, although he said it was because he was “not on the same page” as the company’s board. And the security team was placed on leave.
