Ina Steiner and David Steiner have reached a final settlement with eBay worth nearly £37.5 million, ending claims that former employees harassed and threatened them over their reporting. The agreement also includes £5.27 million in charitable donations and requires eBay to issue a public statement about the conduct of former executives involved in the case.
The Steiners, who founded EcommerceBytes, said they were targeted with cyberstalking, death threats and in-person surveillance. Prosecutors later said the harassment campaign included anonymous deliveries of live cockroaches, spiders, a funeral wreath and a bloody pig face mask, along with pornographic magazines sent to a neighbour’s home in the husband’s name.
David and Ina Steiner settlement
The deal resolves more than six years of criminal and civil proceedings tied to allegations that the campaign was meant to silence the couple’s reporting on eBay. Christopher Murphy, who represented the Steiners, called it “a warning that attempts by big business to suppress speech and the press will not be tolerated.” He also said, “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,”
For the Steiners, the settlement turns a long-running legal fight into a concrete outcome: cash compensation, a charitable component and a public acknowledgment from eBay. The public statement requirement is unusual because it extends beyond payment and asks the company to address the conduct of former executives tied to the matter.
eBay, Devin Wenig, Steve Wymer and Wendy Jones
eBay said what the Steiners were subjected to by former employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened. The company also accepted the unprofessional tone in internal communications by Devin Wenig, Steve Wymer and Wendy Jones, while saying the former employees’ misconduct was wrong and that it was not representative of its culture.
The legal chain behind the settlement started long before the money changed hands. The Steiners filed a lawsuit in a Boston court in 2021. In 2020, prosecutors charged seven former eBay employees; most of them later pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy and cyberstalking, and most were 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.
More than six years later
The case also carries a corporate-accountability lesson that reaches beyond the size of the payout. eBay said in its earlier statement that “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.” The final settlement moves that position from statement to obligation, with a public explanation now built into the agreement.
What the deal does not spell out is the exact wording of that public statement or the specific actions or communications by former executives that led eBay to accept responsibility. That leaves the settlement as both an endpoint and a record of how a harassment case tied to press coverage ended: with compensation, a charitable commitment and a company forced to address what happened in public.
