Speaker 1: A media Oh my gosh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: a podcast that recently also pivoted to video, but not
Speaker 1: this week. For me. You are seeing, Jason, You're seeing
Speaker 1: some sort of animated version of me right now, because
Speaker 1: every week my camera does something different for reasons that
Speaker 1: are unfathomable to me and deeply frustrating. I love pivoting
Speaker 1: to video, Jason. That's something you and I both have
Speaker 1: great experiences with, and it's working really well.
Speaker 2: There's a wonderful little lesson here, listeners, Because Robert is
Speaker 2: using a very fancy actual camera, the type of which
Speaker 2: you would use to film a professional video. I am
Speaker 2: using a fifty dollars Logitech web camera that has no
Speaker 2: buttons on it. There's not a single button there. Software
Speaker 2: that operates great. No, I can't do I can't screw
Speaker 2: up the setup of it because I never did anything.
Speaker 2: I plugged in the little USB cord and I appear
Speaker 2: if anything else other than that had happened, I would
Speaker 2: have been helpless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's how we used to do things before
Speaker 1: we recorded video, and it looked fine, and then we
Speaker 1: got a camera that also looked fine but breaks periodically.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know why anyway, Jason, do you think
Speaker 1: we should bomb all of the power plants and return
Speaker 1: to living in caves like our ancestors fighting bears for
Speaker 1: scarce resources.
Speaker 2: Those are my favorite social media accounts that talk about
Speaker 2: like we need to get back to when we are
Speaker 2: all just each growing our own food. That's when the
Speaker 2: standard of living was higher. Back we all when one
Speaker 2: blight could wipe out your crops and your whole family
Speaker 2: would start.
Speaker 1: It's the fact of that. I just it would be
Speaker 1: so much more refreshing to deal with a bear right
Speaker 1: now than a camera. I understand a bear right.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Bears are are very easy. They have very very obvious
Speaker 1: ONTs and needs. I don't have to figure out how
Speaker 1: a shutter works for a bear. I just have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get higher than the bear, or
Speaker 1: hide my food in a big barrel, or have like
Speaker 1: spears and hide around a fire. I think we should
Speaker 1: replace all of our technology with bears, Jason, is kind
Speaker 1: of where I land on this on this journey, Like
Speaker 1: what if instead of you know, for example, kids using
Speaker 1: chat GPT to do their college essays, they just brought
Speaker 1: bears to school and we let the bears fight it out.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a better world.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's my understanding that that's how the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union worked for centuries, is an entirely bear based society
Speaker 2: based on the various cartoons I saw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what Marx was really working at, was getting
Speaker 1: getting us all back to a foundation of bears. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't know why we got off on the tangent, Jason,
Speaker 1: are you ready to hear more about how eBay just
Speaker 1: absolutely loses its mind and has a former CIA guy
Speaker 1: try to destroy the lives of a nice elderly blocker couple.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, here's where this becomes one of the weirdest
Speaker 2: stories I've heard in my entire life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's and more well just actually that, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot there when we come back from the
Speaker 1: cold open, and we're back from the cold open, so, Jason,
Speaker 1: a mega corporation like eBay makes a lot of enemies,
Speaker 1: and the Steiners are not the only people on Devin
Speaker 1: Winnigs shit list. However, his shit list was entirely, weirdly,
Speaker 1: freakishly petty, one of the people he hated most, the
Speaker 1: only guy really at the same level on this as
Speaker 1: the Steiners on Devin shitlist was an anonymous Twitter account
Speaker 1: called Fido Master aka at unsuck eBay. Now, you and
Speaker 1: I have dealt with this guy all our lives. Right
Speaker 1: this is an angry dude online who hates you, specific
Speaker 1: for reasons that are complex and deeply personal, in Fido
Speaker 1: Master's case, based on some stuff he's made public. Because
Speaker 1: we actually don't know who this guy is. His wife
Speaker 1: used to sell things on eBay and got angry at
Speaker 1: company policies, and so he just decided to become their
Speaker 1: loudest hater on Twitter. Now I'm saying this. When I
Speaker 1: say a hater, I don't mean like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: people right now, there's a whole industry, and like there's
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of guys who make all of their
Speaker 1: money now that Musk has monetized Twitter, like sharing different
Speaker 1: clips of different right wing grifters that they hate, and
Speaker 1: like those guys exist on the right too. There's like
Speaker 1: entire accounts dedicated to Joe Biden or like libs of
Speaker 1: TikTok and stuff where they're monetized hating accounts. That's a
Speaker 1: sizable chunk of Like how you make money in Internet
Speaker 1: content is like picking one person or a specific group
Speaker 1: of people, grabbing clips of them doing stuff out in
Speaker 1: the world and then just being a hater and a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff. It's not it's you know, we
Speaker 1: can argue about what it says about humanity that it's
Speaker 1: so profitable, but it's profitable because millions of people engage
Speaker 1: with that content, right. They listen to it, they read it,
Speaker 1: they share it. It's extremely popular stuff, Fio Master.
Speaker 2: Our internet economy would collapse if that personality type disappeared.
Speaker 2: We really need them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a solid forty percent of Silicon Valley's
Speaker 1: money is related in one or another. Did that kind
Speaker 1: of guy? Fido Master is not really that kind of
Speaker 1: an account. Most of his posts about eBay when in
Speaker 1: the period where he becomes like the obsessive focus of
Speaker 1: a lot of the CEO's anger, get like a dozen likes. Right, Yet,
Speaker 1: for reasons unknown, the entire c suited eBay kind of
Speaker 1: pivoting off of Devon's obsession, came to believe that Fido
Speaker 1: Master had dominated the social media narrative around the company,
Speaker 1: that this guy is like has influenced how everyone online
Speaker 1: is talking about eBay because of his insidious posting skills. Now,
Speaker 1: I have not seen any evidence whatsoever that this guy
Speaker 1: harmed eBay's bottom line in any way. And like with
Speaker 1: the Steiners, at least you can say, yes, there were
Speaker 1: people at Elliott Management and other big investment funds who
Speaker 1: took seriously what the Steiners were saying. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's really true of anyone. For Fido Master, he just,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, winning can't get over the fact that
Speaker 1: there's this hater on eBay talking shit about how he's
Speaker 1: running the company.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you, this kind of paranoia has been everywhere
Speaker 2: since Twitter came along. There are companies that had entire
Speaker 2: meetings with all of their executives over how over they
Speaker 2: had rolled out some product or some ad campaign about
Speaker 2: They were having a meeting with their their PR people
Speaker 2: everybody else about the backlash we're getting on Twitter. We're
Speaker 2: getting canceled on Twitter, when what they were talking about
Speaker 2: was a total of three people complaining and each of
Speaker 2: their each of their tweets got four likes. But the
Speaker 2: perception that, oh my gosh, we're getting canceled on Twitter.
Speaker 2: People used to be and maybe still are that used
Speaker 2: to be so scared of that that they would immediately
Speaker 2: fire somebody or immediately pull the ad whatever based on
Speaker 2: the meager's tiniest little bit of criticism on there. So
Speaker 2: I can totally see how they got freaked out by it.
Speaker 1: And it's it's the same like as journalism has gotten
Speaker 1: to haul that out as an injury as an industry.
Speaker 1: There's like a lot of political journalism as just leftists,
Speaker 1: Like look at this new trend that's spreading among leftists,
Speaker 1: or look at this new trend spreading among Trump supporters,
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, you got three Twitter accounts there,
Speaker 1: You've got like a handful of posts a guy made
Speaker 1: that might have just been a joke. And I haven't
Speaker 1: seen any evidence that anyone did anything in the real
Speaker 1: world as a result of this. But suddenly like this
Speaker 1: is a trend, or this is a trend among gen
Speaker 1: z because you found like a dozen kids joking about
Speaker 1: it or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like it does not take a dozen They can find
Speaker 2: literally you can you read those articles they typic have
Speaker 2: literally three examples. That seems to be the rule with
Speaker 2: most newsrooms. If you can find three tweets, three tiktoks, whatever,
Speaker 2: you can now say, well, there's a new trend among
Speaker 2: gen z it's and they make up a name for it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: It's like, no, it was these three people who all
Speaker 2: went to the same middle school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that kind of thinking is clearly at play
Speaker 1: with Winning and with eBay's c suite here, right, every
Speaker 1: regardless of how much actual engagement he's getting, because some
Speaker 1: of Fino Master suites do get a lot more engagement,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence even the ones that do are
Speaker 1: moving the needle for eBay. What moves the needle for
Speaker 1: eBay is the c suite wasting a shitload of money
Speaker 1: and not adequately responding to the fact that Amazon is
Speaker 1: starting to eat their lunch. Right, But that would require
Speaker 1: like them to take a hard look at how they
Speaker 1: actually function as executives as opposed to just obsessing over
Speaker 1: this Twitter account.
Speaker 2: So you're seeing the same thing with Hollywood today, where
Speaker 2: there will be some movie that they spent three hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars on based around a comic book character nobody
Speaker 2: had ever heard of, and bombs and then somebody there
Speaker 2: in the studio will say, well, you know what it was.
Speaker 2: It was all these trolls on Twitter, these these right
Speaker 2: wing trolls. It's like, man, they can't sink a blockbuster movie,
Speaker 2: these twenty five trolls on Twitter, they cannot sink a franchise.
Speaker 2: You did that, You did that.
Speaker 1: Yep, and it's a I mean, I don't know. I've
Speaker 1: been kind of shocked at the reaction to The Acolyte
Speaker 1: because I watched that and like I didn't like it
Speaker 1: as much as I liked and or, but like it
Speaker 1: struck me as like, oh, if you're someone who's into
Speaker 1: like the classic Star Wars stuff, the Jedi and the Lightsabers,
Speaker 1: this seems like it has everything you want. Some of
Speaker 1: the best choreographed fights I've ever seen. The whole thing
Speaker 1: looks great, some decent performances like but no, just the
Speaker 1: reaction to it is this is the biggest disaster in
Speaker 1: Disney history, and a lot of it just seems to
Speaker 1: be because like people on Twitter got angry at.
Speaker 2: It, maybe, but also that show cost six hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars per y minute right of screen time, Like like
Speaker 2: you can say, well, it's all these backlash from these jerks,
Speaker 2: Like if the show had been good and if you'd
Speaker 2: kept it on some sort of a reasonable budget, you've
Speaker 2: been fine. It's you know, like the backlash was there,
Speaker 2: but if anything, had just made the show more visible.
Speaker 1: But yeah, anyway, anyway, fascinating stuff. And yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is you know, we're talking about kind of how it's
Speaker 1: written large with these massive Hollywood productions and stuff. But
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in eBay is like how these obsessions
Speaker 1: actually spread within the heads of the people running these companies.
Speaker 1: And I do think it's kind of worth making the
Speaker 1: comparison to like how corporations respond to some of these
Speaker 1: like weirdly outlandish ways, to like Twitter trolling, because it
Speaker 1: is the same like psychology on display at least. So
Speaker 1: because Fido Master is an obsession to winning, he winds
Speaker 1: up getting, you know, getting on Bog's plate. Right enough,
Speaker 1: people who are one step below the CEO but a
Speaker 1: step or two above Bog forward him like, Hey, the
Speaker 1: boss is really freaking out about this guy. Here's another post.
Speaker 1: You should really look into this guy. Right, And for
Speaker 1: reasons that have never been explained to me, Bog becomes
Speaker 1: convinced that Fido Master is not just some guy with
Speaker 1: a grudge against eBay. It's Na Steiner or her husband David,
Speaker 1: and they're running some sort of complex scheme whereby they
Speaker 1: have both a blog where they publish very fair journalism
Speaker 1: that's sometimes critical of eBay and this Twitter account that
Speaker 1: just kind of trolls the company, and they're trying to
Speaker 1: operate both in tandem to destroy eBay's profitability and personally
Speaker 1: damage Devin Winning. Right. That is the theory that former
Speaker 1: CIA operator fucking Jim Bog comes up with. And there's
Speaker 1: no reason for him to think this. The writing is
Speaker 1: not similar between the account and anything that stein Ena does. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Bog has no evidence that there's like that the
Speaker 1: posts are coordinated with the twi wheets or the articles
Speaker 1: you're coordinated with the tweets. But based on just this
Speaker 1: kind of feeling he has, he decides he calls this
Speaker 1: former police captain that he has doing physical surveillance of
Speaker 1: the Steiner residents and he says, I want you to
Speaker 1: go onto their property at night and spray paint the
Speaker 1: name Fido Master on the outside of their home because
Speaker 1: that'll let him know we're onto their scheme.
Speaker 2: So the idea was that this is going to prove that,
Speaker 2: this will be showing them like, hey, we're onto you.
Speaker 1: Right, we know what you're doing.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: It's to prove it it's to.
Speaker 2: Like smoke confused, must have been what must they have
Speaker 2: thought that even was? I mean, I think he might
Speaker 2: do it. He said he was ordered to do it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't do it? Yes, yes, And I think if
Speaker 1: I'm the Steiners at this point, my assumption would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe that's some like graffiti artist with a weird tag
Speaker 1: and oh, Fido master, he tags freeways in a casion
Speaker 1: suburban homes outside of Boston. It's his favorite thing, you'd.
Speaker 2: Assume, or maybe it was slang or something. You would
Speaker 2: never figure it out.
Speaker 1: You would never assume this was done by a former
Speaker 1: police captain on the orders of a former CIA operator
Speaker 1: working directly for the c suited eBay, because that's insane.
Speaker 2: So now the question is did that CEO who we
Speaker 2: spent most of the last episode talking about, did he
Speaker 2: know this occur? Or is there any way to know
Speaker 2: like if this, if he did know, is something that
Speaker 2: would have been said verbally in a hallway and not documented.
Speaker 1: Somewhere, not in now a lot of messages get deleted,
Speaker 1: So I guess the answer I would say is not
Speaker 1: in a way that has been proven in court in
Speaker 1: such a manner that it makes it legally obvious that
Speaker 1: Devin Winning was responsible for this. Do I think it's
Speaker 1: likely he had some awareness of what his security team
Speaker 1: was doing. I think that's a fair thing to state.
Speaker 1: But again, a lot of messages are not present, and
Speaker 1: most of Bob does have some a good amount of
Speaker 1: direct contact with Winnick, which is again he's not unaware
Speaker 1: of aspects of this that he definitely knows about. Aspects
Speaker 1: of this precisely what he knows about is a little
Speaker 1: hard to say, right, because a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of who Bog is communicating with directly is like the
Speaker 1: guy one step below the CEO.
Speaker 2: Right. The fact that any of this made it into
Speaker 2: an email tells you that Bog didn't know what he.
Speaker 1: Was doing, right, of course, he's the worst at this.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievably stupid, like shoddy.
Speaker 2: I know, not to put that stuff in an email
Speaker 2: that now somebody can recover that somebody like that's going
Speaker 2: to come out, especially again, good God, in a work
Speaker 2: email account.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's yeah, it's it is. Yeah, it's unbelievable stuff.
Speaker 1: So Bob followed this up with a campaign of harassment
Speaker 1: against Fido Master's Twitter account, despite the fact that his
Speaker 1: vaunted analyst team hadn't been able to uncover the account
Speaker 1: owner's name from the New York Times quote, fido Master
Speaker 1: received an unsolicited message from a new Twitter user calling
Speaker 1: herself Marissa. Her picture showed her to be about twenty five.
Speaker 1: Claiming to be a former eBay employee. She said she
Speaker 1: possessed extremely damaging videos of executives misbehaving and wanted help
Speaker 1: passing them to the Steiners. So they're like, will prove
Speaker 1: that this guy is working with the Steiners by reaching
Speaker 1: out to her and saying, we have like embarrassing videos
Speaker 1: of eBay executives behaving badly, and we think you can
Speaker 1: get these to the Steiners. So she's trying to fish
Speaker 1: for fido Master to acknowlogy. Yeah, I know them. Fido
Speaker 1: Master is like, well, it looks like miss Steiner has
Speaker 1: a public email address for her public website. If you
Speaker 1: want to get something to her, you should probably go
Speaker 1: to her. I don't know her. Marissa's like, well, how
Speaker 1: about it if I leave the videos on a thumb
Speaker 1: drive at a hotel in the city of your choice
Speaker 1: and you can deliver them to the Steiners. And photo
Speaker 1: Master's like, well, no, that sounds incredibly shady. Why would
Speaker 1: I ever do that? I don't know these people? What
Speaker 1: is wrong with you? The wilder here suggestions got, the
Speaker 1: more Phido Master resisted because whoever's running this account is
Speaker 1: clearly like has above a room temperature IQ and it's
Speaker 1: just like, well, no, so I don't know what's going on,
Speaker 1: because no one would guess that what's going on is
Speaker 1: what's going on here. But he has enough to know, like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do a dead drop of a
Speaker 1: bunch of videos for you random person on Twitter who
Speaker 1: thinks I know this lady. So he starts suggesting, just like, hey,
Speaker 1: get a lawyer, Like, if you're worried that you'll be
Speaker 1: harassed or attacked for having this information, like, talk to
Speaker 1: a lawyer. I can't help you now. Marissa is in reality,
Speaker 1: played by two of Bog's angels. As you may have
Speaker 1: guessed by now, Bog's policy of hiring hot chicks did
Speaker 1: not lead to him having a team that had particularly
Speaker 1: good spy credentials. Veronica Zee, one of the young women
Speaker 1: who played Marissa, had only used eBay once before being hired.
Speaker 1: She had studied criminology in college, but had no relevant
Speaker 1: job experience when she was hired at age twenty three,
Speaker 1: And criminology degrees don't actually make people like tell people
Speaker 1: how to carry out criminal espionage. That's not really like
Speaker 1: why you get that degree. It's mainly to learn, well,
Speaker 1: it's mainly to learn a lot of misinformation about blood
Speaker 1: spatter and DNA. But like that's that's kind of beside
Speaker 1: the point for now.
Speaker 2: In shure, it's not sexist for us to point out
Speaker 2: that his criteria for hiring these women was probably no.
Speaker 1: Like that they're just all young women. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's just that like they don't I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: they're dumb. I don't get that feeling. They just don't
Speaker 1: have any experience committing illegal harassment campaigns, right, Like, they
Speaker 1: don't have any kind of relevant job experience to this.
Speaker 1: Like they're just ladies that he was attracted to and
Speaker 1: he hired to stalk some strangers and they're not very
Speaker 1: good at this, right, Like that's kind of the point.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is not like I think any I
Speaker 1: will say, just based on how Jim and his former
Speaker 1: police captain perform if they had hired a bunch of
Speaker 1: men who thought that they would be really good at spies.
Speaker 1: I don't think they would have been more competent in
Speaker 1: this job because it's a dumb thing to be doing,
Speaker 1: and no one was going to do this job very well.
Speaker 1: So I should emphasize here that the unhinged paranoia and
Speaker 1: rage over the Steiners and Fido Master was not just
Speaker 1: contained to the CEO and his chief of security. On
Speaker 1: June twenty fifth, twenty nineteen, Chief of Communication Steve Weimer
Speaker 1: texted two eBay Communications employees about an e Commerce Fits
Speaker 1: article that mildly noted some issues EBA had with a competitor.
Speaker 1: The executive stated he could not complain about the article,
Speaker 1: but then added, crazily love it when a secret we
Speaker 1: can't speak it out loud plan comes together, and then
Speaker 1: like a winking emoji and added we always reserve the
Speaker 1: right to go zero to sixty and get crazy on
Speaker 1: her ass. But this is a huge adjustment the last
Speaker 1: month ever since the Walker's post, which is the post
Speaker 1: about that bar that got created. So again they are
Speaker 1: just putting this shit in messages right Like Steve Weimer is,
Speaker 1: you know, part of the c suite. He's the chief
Speaker 1: of Communications. He is the guy that Winnig is talking
Speaker 1: to and then Wymer is communicating very directly with Bog
Speaker 1: about all of the crimes that they're committing, and he's
Speaker 1: just like emailing back and forth like I love our
Speaker 1: secret plan. I can't wait to go zero to sixty
Speaker 1: and get crazy on her ass.
Speaker 2: And where's the voice of reason in this? Like this
Speaker 2: has to be a corporate culture thing. Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: why you can't whoever, I know not everybody's going to
Speaker 2: go down for this, but it's weird how nobody involved
Speaker 2: is like, are we talking about the same thing? Are
Speaker 2: you talking about the lady that the blogs about, the
Speaker 2: the e sales seeing you guys are all yelling about
Speaker 2: you're really mad about something? Which poster? Are you really?
Speaker 2: I guess I missed it. I saw her like briefly
Speaker 2: mentioned It's like, no, that's the one. We need to
Speaker 2: fling her into a volcano.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this lady is our al Qaeda, Like we are
Speaker 1: doing a war on terror against her.
Speaker 2: It's so weird. There was something there with their corporate
Speaker 2: with their corporate culture that was so weird.
Speaker 1: It's a mix of I think you don't question the CEO,
Speaker 1: you don't question the executives, above you, and they don't
Speaker 1: question the people above them. So when you have a
Speaker 1: guy like Winnig, who I think is just a really
Speaker 1: insecure person who's not used to any kind of criticism.
Speaker 1: You know, he's kind of born rich. He gets to
Speaker 1: become a CEO at age twenty three because his dad
Speaker 1: had had the job. I think he's just kind of
Speaker 1: a petty person who's not very secure, And when you
Speaker 1: have this kind of corporate culture that is so personality driven,
Speaker 1: his characteristics get sort of filtered out to become characteristics
Speaker 1: of how the company operates, both in terms of who
Speaker 1: he hires, which are people that he feels sympatico with
Speaker 1: and they feel pressured to act in ways that you
Speaker 1: know are going to be pleasing to him. I really
Speaker 1: do think a lot of it comes down to that.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm not just beating a dead horse here,
Speaker 2: because this is somebody who has lived in public is
Speaker 2: running an internet company. I mean, how old were you
Speaker 2: the first time somebody a stranger on the internet threatened
Speaker 2: violence against you for something you had readen or said.
Speaker 1: Probably the first time I had a cracked article published,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was like nineteen, Yeah, maybe idear
Speaker 1: in arguments on something awful. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And they didn't invent the Internet until I
Speaker 2: was in my twenties. But it was within the first
Speaker 2: month of me getting my first Aol account that somebody
Speaker 2: told me they wanted me to die or they're going
Speaker 2: to come to my house and kill me, because of
Speaker 2: a joke I had made. Like, I'm not condoning that behavior.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, if you or if you live in
Speaker 2: the public eye on the Internet, and you and I
Speaker 2: have been now been doing it for most of our lives,
Speaker 2: that's just the way. That's the noise the Internet makes
Speaker 2: at you. It's people telling you so the idea that
Speaker 2: he is so hyper sensitive to criticism, I don't know
Speaker 2: how you can live to be aged twelve in the
Speaker 2: Internet era without having a thick skin about people calling
Speaker 2: you all sorts of names. The fact that this person
Speaker 2: lived to adulthood and lived in the public eye and
Speaker 2: ran an Internet company one of the biggest names online
Speaker 2: and was not used to trolls or whatever, and so
Speaker 2: to the point that this incredibly mild criticism just sets
Speaker 2: them all off. I even now you've told me every
Speaker 2: detail of this of the history, I still can't wrap
Speaker 2: my head around it.
Speaker 1: I think it's because derangement is progressive and it is
Speaker 1: like it's a like the derangement is like the pace
Speaker 1: at which it can proceeds is accelerated by your access
Speaker 1: to power, right, Because that number one, it removes your
Speaker 1: accountability and it's it's it's kind of like how if
Speaker 1: you only ever encounter cocaine at parties. You might do
Speaker 1: cocaine at a couple of parties, but if you have
Speaker 1: a big bag of cocaine, you will go from when
Speaker 1: I do cocaine, I do a line of it to
Speaker 1: I am doing cocaine every hour of every day until
Speaker 1: my heart explodes. Right, Because you just like and that
Speaker 1: I think power like number one, there actually is some
Speaker 1: like psychological science behind this, Like power is addictive in
Speaker 1: ways that you can see if you just look at
Speaker 1: the trajectory of a guy like Elon Musk. But it
Speaker 1: also like I think this amount of wealth and power,
Speaker 1: I think winning becomes less rational every month that he
Speaker 1: is doing this, right, And I think that is true
Speaker 1: of a lot of people if they don't have I
Speaker 1: think there are ways to protect yourself from this. One
Speaker 1: of the ways that you can protect your whole organization
Speaker 1: from this is by having safeguards and structures in it
Speaker 1: that are meant to add accountability and check power of
Speaker 1: even the executives. Right Like, when you actually have functional safeguards,
Speaker 1: it reduces the degree that you get deranged like this.
Speaker 1: But eBay clearly doesn't have anything like that set up,
Speaker 1: and so Winnig is just and everyone below him is
Speaker 1: just spiraling. You know, That's really what this story is about.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk more about their spiraling, but first listen
Speaker 1: to our sponsors spiral on the ads. We're back. So
Speaker 1: a month or two after Steve Weimer, chief of Communications,
Speaker 1: sends that message to some of his employees about going
Speaker 1: crazy on ENA's ass in August first of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: that New York Times published an article about a lawsuit
Speaker 1: EBA had filed against Amazon for unlawfully poaching sellers. In
Speaker 1: ENA's coverage of this article, she wrote about Winnig, saying
Speaker 1: that he has quote been unable to stop at a
Speaker 1: cline in market sales and that his plan to staunch
Speaker 1: the bleeding by suing Amazon may not be the best tactic. Again,
Speaker 1: she's a very modestly spoken person, not a firebrand. But
Speaker 1: Winnig is.
Speaker 2: To a comical degree, right, like every quote you read
Speaker 2: from her, it's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's remarkable. But Winnig, hearing this very reasonable statement,
Speaker 1: immediately texts Steve Weimer, saying, Ina is out with a
Speaker 1: hot piece on the litigation. If we are ever going
Speaker 1: to take her down, now is the time? Why? Why
Speaker 1: is now the time? How is that going to help you?
Speaker 1: Devin Winnig. So you should note here that Winnig does
Speaker 1: not order his underlings or anyone else to commit a crime.
Speaker 1: He just says, if we're going to take her out,
Speaker 1: we should do it now. Right, And Winnig's successful defense
Speaker 1: of himself in this case hinges a lot on that.
Speaker 1: Now Weimer his communications guy, who is I should note
Speaker 1: the son and grandson of Baptist pastors. That's going to
Speaker 1: be relevant. In the second repeats winnigs statement to Bog
Speaker 1: Like Weimer. After Winnigs says this, if we're going to
Speaker 1: take her out, we got to do it now, Weymer
Speaker 1: messages Jim Bogg and says, this hatred is a sin
Speaker 1: I am very sinful. Bog responds, let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: do we need her entire site? Shut down. I'm not
Speaker 1: fucking around here anymore. And Weimer responds, Amen, I want
Speaker 1: her done. Bog says so and so that's that part
Speaker 1: is censored. Said to burn her to the ground. Correct,
Speaker 1: and Weimer responds, she is a biased troll who needs
Speaker 1: to get all caps burned down. These are we have
Speaker 1: like a direct copies of the text messages, so it
Speaker 1: sounds like, you know, Weimer said, Hey, Winnig says we
Speaker 1: can take her down now, and then he starts doing
Speaker 1: all this biblical shit, hate your hatreds of sin, and
Speaker 1: I'm very sinful, but we're going after her now. We're
Speaker 1: gonna burn her down. And again, if your boss is
Speaker 1: messaging you stuff like this, it's time to get another job,
Speaker 1: like because you're going to get deposed about what he's
Speaker 1: asking you to do.
Speaker 2: Unless he's talking about yes, let's go to legal and
Speaker 2: see if we can get a cease and desist because
Speaker 2: we think these claims are libelous or whatever. Yeah, because
Speaker 2: I get it. Some some corporate people use language like
Speaker 2: they're talking about going to war, We're gonna destroy it,
Speaker 2: we're gonna burn it. But what they mean is we're
Speaker 2: gonna call we're gonna get into a conference call with
Speaker 2: the legal team and ask if we can send a
Speaker 2: mean letter on lawyer letter head and see if that'll
Speaker 2: scare her into shutting off her website like they use
Speaker 2: the language they use, did not you know, wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 2: convey to Let's send her a bloody pig mask now
Speaker 2: spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: Ye for where this is heading. So Bog does a
Speaker 1: yes and to Wimer's like, we need to burn her down,
Speaker 1: and it's like, Okay, I'm gonna execute Plan B and
Speaker 1: Whymer promises Bog, I will manage any bad fallout right now.
Speaker 1: This conversation seems to be the first time that bog
Speaker 1: laid out to a superior his theory that the fido
Speaker 1: Master account was either run by ENA's wife or ENA's
Speaker 1: husband David Steiner, or quote another close associate, and he
Speaker 1: then lied about the success of the catfishing attempt that
Speaker 1: his employees had already botched, telling Wimer, we have further
Speaker 1: reason to believe he Fido Master is either her husband
Speaker 1: or another close associate. I've been communicating with him every day.
Speaker 1: I told him I have an incriminating video that he
Speaker 1: needs to see. He bid on it hook line and sinker.
Speaker 1: I want to leave it at a hotel concierge for him.
Speaker 1: If I can get him to pick it up. His
Speaker 1: ass is mine. It is not, and like he didn't.
Speaker 1: At no point was he ever falling along with this.
Speaker 1: Bog is just kind of lying to his boss to
Speaker 1: pump up his own competence. But the fact that Weimer
Speaker 1: is like, Yep, this seems like a good plan. This
Speaker 1: seems like a thing eBay should be doing. Again, he's
Speaker 1: directly under winning. So in early August, Ina published yet
Speaker 1: another article about winnigs ever increasing salary. The article was
Speaker 1: again a perfectly normal example of her reporting, but eBay
Speaker 1: leadership treated it like a death threat. Winnig, who I
Speaker 1: should note this very year twenty nineteen, was voted number
Speaker 1: one hundred on Forbes's list of America's most innovative leaders,
Speaker 1: sent out an email to his C suite executives demanding
Speaker 1: answers to the crucial emergency of an old lady and
Speaker 1: her husband writing blog posts.
Speaker 2: Per Yeah, at this point, does she even know they're
Speaker 2: mad at them? I know she knows straight painted something
Speaker 2: on her garage. It was inscrutable, But does she even
Speaker 2: know that they're even reading her her website.
Speaker 1: She knows they're reading her website because she's influential in
Speaker 1: the industry. She has sources who work at eBay who
Speaker 1: feed her info, so she's aware that her stuff is read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but she has no idea that any of this is
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 2: Because why would you ever think?
Speaker 1: No one would assume this. This is crazy. For what
Speaker 1: happens next, I'm going to quote from CBS News is
Speaker 1: write up here. eBay's chief communications officer, Steve Weimer wrote back,
Speaker 1: we are going to crush this lady. About a month later, Winnick,
Speaker 1: the CEO of eBay, texted, take her down, prosecutors say.
Speaker 1: Steve Weimer later texted eBay security director Jim Bogg, I
Speaker 1: want to see ashes as long as it takes whatever
Speaker 1: it takes, which is a little further than like using
Speaker 1: a war metaphor. Right now, bog sweating over Elliott management
Speaker 1: scrutiny of corporate operations and eager to justify the expenses
Speaker 1: of his branch of the company, leapt into action. He
Speaker 1: shared Weimer's I want to see Ashes message with his
Speaker 1: deputy David Harville, and added, I've been ordered to find
Speaker 1: and destroy. Now all of this is really bad stuff
Speaker 1: to have in writing if you are planning to commit
Speaker 1: a bunch of crimes. But they apparently don't teach you that.
Speaker 1: In the CIA, despite the graffiti, stalking, and phishing attempts,
Speaker 1: neither the Steiners nor Fido Master had stopped their dastardly
Speaker 1: behavior of right mean things about eBay. In email conversations, Winnig, Weimer,
Speaker 1: and Bog lost their minds over the fact that Twitter
Speaker 1: refused to remove Phido Master's account after they complained about it. Finally,
Speaker 1: Weimer concluded an early August email by saying, this issue
Speaker 1: gives me ulcers, harms employee morale, and trickles into everything
Speaker 1: about our brand. I genuinely believe these people are acting
Speaker 1: out of malice. In anything all caps we can do
Speaker 1: to solve it should be explored Somewhere. At some point,
Speaker 1: someone shows to let this slide. It has grown to
Speaker 1: a point that is absolutely unacceptable. It's the blind eye
Speaker 1: towards graffiti that turns into Mayhem syndrome, and I'm sick
Speaker 1: about it. Whatever period it period takes period. So at
Speaker 1: this point Bog has been told several times do literally
Speaker 1: anything to stop these people, and he decides he responds
Speaker 1: by asking, do I have permission to neutralize ENA's website?
Speaker 1: I think I can do it in two weeks or less,
Speaker 1: and Weimer again responds by saying, whatever it takes. So
Speaker 1: what Bog takes from this is that I should sign
Speaker 1: the Steiner's personal email accounts up for a bunch of
Speaker 1: porn newsletters and other newsletters as well. He signs them
Speaker 1: up for sin City Fetish Night, the Satanic Temples newsletter,
Speaker 1: and the Communist Party newsletter for some reason, and then
Speaker 1: Bog's chief aid, missus Pop, posts the Steiner's home address
Speaker 1: on Twitter. This is the point at which the Steiners
Speaker 1: may start to realize something's weird, like how do people
Speaker 1: have our address? What the hell is going on? But again,
Speaker 1: probably just think it's trolls and don't reckon that. Realize
Speaker 1: certainly that all of these trolls are just one or
Speaker 1: two people at eBay operating a bunch of burner accounts.
Speaker 1: So miss if.
Speaker 2: Somebody signed me up for a bunch of newsletters and
Speaker 2: mailing lists, I would not notice whatsoever. That public Gmail
Speaker 2: I use or the public inbox is just an ocean.
Speaker 2: It's all breathing bought. So suddenly I'm getting something from
Speaker 2: like the whatever they sign them up for a bunch
Speaker 2: of porn stuff or whatever. Just like, yeah, that's that's
Speaker 2: what my inbox looks like, Yeah, that's all. Yeah, there
Speaker 2: is this actually less porn spam than what I had
Speaker 2: last week. All right, we're getting better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like yeah, like every red blooded American, my email
Speaker 1: inbox is a mix of porn spam and price alerts
Speaker 1: on Ammo. So yeah, like that's that's just kind of
Speaker 1: the norm. So Miss Pop, who gets really into her
Speaker 1: job stocking these people, sets up a Burner account with
Speaker 1: a profile picture of a skull and pretends to be
Speaker 1: an eBay seller who is angry at Ena Steiner for
Speaker 1: hurting his business. She messages a bunch and Ina, being intelligent,
Speaker 1: ignores the messages until Pop writes, I guess I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to get your attention another way, bitch. What
Speaker 1: followed is described later in the court case against bog
Speaker 1: Pop and the rest of the eBay skulldugery team is
Speaker 1: ordering quote, unwanted and scary items and services to the
Speaker 1: Steiner's home, and ordering items intended to embarrass the Steiners
Speaker 1: to their neighbor's addresses. Now that leaves out a lot
Speaker 1: of context, and in an interview with CBS News, Ina elaborates, quote,
Speaker 1: somebody left a voicemail for us saying they couldn't fulfill
Speaker 1: the order for a wet specimen. And David was the
Speaker 1: one who called, and he said, what is a wet specimen?
Speaker 1: And it was a pig fetus. That's when I really
Speaker 1: my heart sank because I thought who might be angry
Speaker 1: at something I wrote? And I couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were desperately trying to think who could
Speaker 1: it be, because you would never guess it's the CEO
Speaker 1: of eBay Sam through a complicated process, whose underlings are
Speaker 1: sending me a pig fetus, because only a crazy person
Speaker 1: would assume that.
Speaker 2: And also that this guy thinks it's like in a
Speaker 2: horror movie where the box is going to show up
Speaker 2: on the door and she's going to open it up
Speaker 2: and there's just going to be like a dead, slimy
Speaker 2: pig fetus in there, where in reality it's like, well no,
Speaker 2: there's all sorts of procedures ye specifically to stop this
Speaker 2: from happening, because of course every weirdo is trying to
Speaker 2: send his x Y a pig fetus, like the company
Speaker 2: that sells that stuff to whatever science classrooms, whatever, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's like forty percent of their orders, I'm sure, as
Speaker 2: weirdos trying to send it just to an enemy. So yeah,
Speaker 2: they've got a thing where they're gonna call the recipient
Speaker 2: and say, hey, you know, we've got a procedure for
Speaker 2: shipping these. Do you have a lab or whatever?
Speaker 1: Right, and do you want a pig fetus?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Do you actually want to pig fetus or are
Speaker 2: you one of the most of our orders? Whereas some
Speaker 2: some freak trying to send it to somebody they're they're
Speaker 2: angry at.
Speaker 1: It does show the very like Hollywood movie understanding of
Speaker 1: how reality works, where it's like, yeah, we'll just have
Speaker 1: a pig fate fetus maled to them. We're like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not how these Someone is going to contact them
Speaker 1: to ask if they want to take delivery of like
Speaker 1: dead animal parts, Like, they don't just drop that off
Speaker 1: in front of your house in an unmarked package. You
Speaker 1: have to do that yourself if you want to male
Speaker 1: people dead animal bits. Trust me, I have done it anyway.
Speaker 1: I did. Jason one time from a fan receive an
Speaker 1: enormous pint glass filled with like penis stones from like
Speaker 1: animals that get like built calcium build ups inside their
Speaker 1: urinary tracts. There's like an elephant one in there that's
Speaker 1: the size of like a fucking almost the size of
Speaker 1: a pool queue. So, but that was someone who liked me.
Speaker 1: I don't know why they sent that, but it's nice
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 2: Oh, to be clear, there's nothing I could receive in
Speaker 2: a package that would make me think somebody hated me.
Speaker 2: If somebody sent me a dead rat, i'e immediately think, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, I think I put this in a book.
Speaker 2: This must be a reference to something that happened in
Speaker 2: one of the books.
Speaker 1: It's clearly a fan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a sprobably fan. And somebody at last Christmas
Speaker 2: sent me some some cookies and I ate them like
Speaker 2: it's probably fine like that. They surely don't want me dead,
Speaker 2: they probably yeah, yeah, So no, I didn't didn't think
Speaker 2: twice about it. No, And it's just so.
Speaker 1: Strange, Ina, you know, they're just kind of baffled by
Speaker 1: the pig feetus thing. But then on August tenth, at four,
Speaker 1: a package containing a pig masked mask soaked in blood
Speaker 1: arrives at the Steiner house. They received a Twitter DM
Speaker 1: minutes later in all caps, saying do I have your
Speaker 1: attention now?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: The good news is that David and Nina had called
Speaker 1: the police to make a report about the weird shit
Speaker 1: that they were receiving, and an officer is on site
Speaker 1: as the pig mask arrives. So I can tell you
Speaker 1: from experience, having both had to report to police when
Speaker 1: I have gotten death threats and who have tried to
Speaker 1: walk people through it when they have been stalked by
Speaker 1: different kind of terrorist groups, it is it can be
Speaker 1: hard to get police to take cases like this seriously.
Speaker 1: Online stalking and harassment often sounds like a joke until
Speaker 1: it isn't. The Steiners are kind of lucky in that
Speaker 1: there is an officer on scene when they receive the
Speaker 1: package with this mask and the Twitter message, and the
Speaker 1: cop both sees that as it's happening, and he sees
Speaker 1: how scared they are and immediately is like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is probably a serious issue, Like this is actually something
Speaker 1: that we might need to deal with. So they get
Speaker 1: kind of lucky there and the police start working, you know,
Speaker 1: to their credit, they actually are really on the ball
Speaker 1: in this specific case, and while they did that, Bog
Speaker 1: and his team escalated their attacks on the Steiner family,
Speaker 1: livid to the point of insanity that for all this
Speaker 1: they still hadn't stopped blogging. So Bog sends the Steiners
Speaker 1: the copy of a book titled Grief Diaries Surviving the
Speaker 1: Loss of a Spouse, and then he sends them a
Speaker 1: funeral wreath. Both Steiners at this point take this as
Speaker 1: a death threat, and they do you give you an
Speaker 1: idea what it is, because it is and because people
Speaker 1: are messaging them saying you're going to die if you
Speaker 1: don't stop doing this. So to give you an idea
Speaker 1: of how seriously they take this, they start sleeping in
Speaker 1: separate beds so that if they're attacked in the night,
Speaker 1: one of them has a chance to get away. So
Speaker 1: this is not like like that's at that point you're
Speaker 1: doing psychological damage to people, right Like, this is not
Speaker 1: just like weird any silly like harassment anymore. This is
Speaker 1: has crossed into being a very serious crime. Now, along
Speaker 1: with the threats to life in Lim came a dizzying
Speaker 1: barrage of pornography and insects. They repeatedly sent eBay repeatedly
Speaker 1: or security people at eBay repeatedly sent copies of a
Speaker 1: barely legal addition of hustler that was like, just turned eighteen,
Speaker 1: look at this hot barely eighteen girl, right, And they
Speaker 1: mailed it not to the Steiners but to their neighbors,
Speaker 1: but addressed to David Steiner. I think to try and
Speaker 1: convince his wife that he was looking at barely legal
Speaker 1: pornography but didn't know his own home address. I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure how she hoped this, or maybe to convince
Speaker 1: the neighbors of the Steiners that David was into barely
Speaker 1: legal pornography. It's a little unclear to me how the
Speaker 1: best case scenario for this caper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's supposed to be like embarrass them with the neighbors.
Speaker 2: And I'm just imagining a husband and wife at the
Speaker 2: neighbor's house and the woman is like, oh my gosh, this.
Speaker 2: I think that the guy, the man living extra him,
Speaker 2: I think he might be looking at pornography, and the
Speaker 2: dude just like, yes, that is a shocking thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: to accuse a man of.
Speaker 1: I have had a neighbor admit to me to being intovar,
Speaker 1: which is like pooring of like being an animal that's
Speaker 1: eaten by other anthropomorphic animals like this is the eighteen
Speaker 1: year old, barely legal issue of Hustler does not even like,
Speaker 1: does not cross the boundary of being like I would
Speaker 1: be worried if a neighbor got this at their house.
Speaker 2: The freakiest part is that he's still doing like analog
Speaker 2: magazine porn. That's like the most perfect thing. I can
Speaker 2: imagine that you're you paid like like eight dollars for
Speaker 2: a like twenty three photos in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, all right, David, could you come over here.
Speaker 1: We're not angry, We're not angry, but I just wanted
Speaker 1: to do you know about the internet? Can I Can
Speaker 1: I walk you through this thing? Because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of options besides having a Hustler maga mailed to your
Speaker 1: house today. Actually, yeah, anyway, it doesn't work, but you
Speaker 1: know it does work Jason advertising theoretically. Anyway, here's ants
Speaker 1: and we're back. So, in addition to copies of the
Speaker 1: barely legal issue of Hustler, the like Boggs team starts
Speaker 1: mailing fly Larva, live spiders, and boxes of cockroaches to
Speaker 1: the Steiner home. Now at this point, the police set
Speaker 1: up cameras to survey, like what's happening, you know, for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, but this only provides them footage at first,
Speaker 1: with bewildered delivery drivers shipping out insects, porn, and funeral
Speaker 1: supplies online. Mis Pop continued her harassment of Ina, as
Speaker 1: this section from The New York Times describes the Twitter bombardment,
Speaker 1: began to hint at violence. When you hurt our business,
Speaker 1: you hurt our families. People will do anything to protect
Speaker 1: family for exclamation points again not even clear because they're
Speaker 1: not like highlighting this article, you did hurt my business
Speaker 1: because INA's articles are not damaging the business of random
Speaker 1: eBay people. Right, So all of this is just completely,
Speaker 1: completely incomprehensible. And one of the things that is noted
Speaker 1: in that New York Times article is that while all
Speaker 1: of these unhinged messages and packages are being sent to
Speaker 1: the Steiners. On his own Twitter account, mister Weimer evoked
Speaker 1: Fred Rogers. He said a movie about the inspirational TV
Speaker 1: personality made him cry, and he once retweeted mister Rogers's
Speaker 1: line that if there's anything that bothers me, it's one
Speaker 1: person demeaning another. But inside eBay, mister Weimer was goading
Speaker 1: the harassment on I want to see ashes, he told
Speaker 1: mister Ball on August eleventh, as long as it takes,
Speaker 1: whatever it takes. Mister Baugh shared the message with his deputy,
Speaker 1: David Harville, adding I've been ordered to find and destroy.
Speaker 1: The next escalation in eBay's war on the Steiners was
Speaker 1: to fly Bog and one of his analysts, missus miss Ze,
Speaker 1: first class, to Boston, where the Steiners lived. They checked
Speaker 1: in at the Ritz and drove to the Steiner's home
Speaker 1: to install a GPS device on their car. Alas Bog's
Speaker 1: CEA CIA techniques were stemied by the unforseeable fact that
Speaker 1: the Steiners used their garage as a garage. They were
Speaker 1: not prepared for this. Who would be planting a GPS
Speaker 1: device on someone's car because they wrote criticisms of eBay
Speaker 1: is a crime on its own. But Bog knows the
Speaker 1: key to being a good criminal is to never just
Speaker 1: commit a couple of crimes at once. You want to
Speaker 1: max out your crime yield so that the police get
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by the density of illegality and shut down. Right.
Speaker 1: That's that's how you beat the cops, is you just
Speaker 1: committed the Trumps method. It does actually work for some people. Yes,
Speaker 1: Jim's just a little bit below that level of wealth
Speaker 1: that he can't quite make it. So Jim buys a
Speaker 1: crowbar to break into the Steiner's garaz alas for him
Speaker 1: and his team. They get spotted by the cops. So
Speaker 1: at this point had set up surveillance of the Steiner
Speaker 1: home and they hear through this Gilbert, the police captain
Speaker 1: they're working with on the ground in Boston, here's through
Speaker 1: an internet feed of the local police radio that like
Speaker 1: the police are going to send a team over to
Speaker 1: the Steiner house. So they decide to stop temporarily their
Speaker 1: physical acts against Steiner property. But they did decide to
Speaker 1: order seventy dollars worth of pizza from a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour pizzeria and have it sent to the Steiners at
Speaker 1: four point thirty in the morning. So for the next
Speaker 1: couple of days they continue with this juvenile shit. They
Speaker 1: put up advertisements for estate sales at the Steiner residence.
Speaker 1: They put up like a Craigslist post advertising a swinger
Speaker 1: party there and say ring the doorbell any time of
Speaker 1: day or night, which shows a real swinger parties don't
Speaker 1: work like that. You don't just see a Craigslist for
Speaker 1: a random sex party at a person you don't know's
Speaker 1: house and just show up. Maybe people did before HIV,
Speaker 1: but that not the way the world works anymore.
Speaker 2: Primarily, what was I never in the stuff I read?
Speaker 2: I never understood what was the end goal of trying
Speaker 2: to put the tracker on the vehicle was? What was
Speaker 2: the point of that? What were they trying to find
Speaker 2: out or what?
Speaker 1: I think they were trying to get proof that Ena
Speaker 1: was traveling to meet with Fido Master, and they were
Speaker 1: hoping that they would find her drive to him, and
Speaker 1: then they could prove who Fido Master was and bring
Speaker 1: down their whole criminal enterprise of being mean about eBay
Speaker 1: on the internet. I don't I don't have a way
Speaker 1: to make it make better sense to you than that.
Speaker 2: Because he booked a flight to go do this like,
Speaker 2: that's a that's a meeting, that's a discussion, that's a
Speaker 2: paper trail, that's we're going here to do. We have
Speaker 2: goals to accomplish with this trip and what they did
Speaker 2: once they were there. I'm not saying because they didn't
Speaker 2: have a plan, It's just I can't figure out what
Speaker 2: the plan was because again, all of this, I assume
Speaker 2: is just to try to intimidate this couple into taking
Speaker 2: their website down. But so far you've not even made
Speaker 2: it clear that that's what you want them to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you're just trying to scare them away from posting.
Speaker 1: But at no point have they received like a set
Speaker 1: of demands. Because I know, if.
Speaker 2: You send me a box of bugs and you want
Speaker 2: me to piece together what I'm supposed.
Speaker 1: To what am I supposed to do as a result
Speaker 1: of these bugs? Which of my activities do you want
Speaker 1: me to stop or do you think I need bugs?
Speaker 2: Or which specific Like you've not made it clear you're
Speaker 2: implying that a specific person because again they're not saying, hey,
Speaker 2: we're here from eBay. It's kind of implied this is
Speaker 2: on behalf of somebody else. So it's like, well, is
Speaker 2: there a specific article you want me to take down?
Speaker 2: Is there any traction you want me to post? What
Speaker 2: did I do to giving them anything actionable?
Speaker 1: That's again this is a very like such a comprehensively
Speaker 1: incompetent effort, and part of you know, you can really
Speaker 1: see the incompetence in the fact that so while they're
Speaker 1: kind of waiting around. They get scared off from breaking
Speaker 1: into the garage, but they keep showing up and doing
Speaker 1: physical surveillance of the property because they don't have any
Speaker 1: better ideas. While they're doing this kind of petty harassment,
Speaker 1: And one day when they drive, when they're like stalking
Speaker 1: them in a rental car, David Steiner gets a photo
Speaker 1: out of his window of their rental car and he
Speaker 1: sends it to the police, and the next time they
Speaker 1: show up, an obvious undercover police car is parked out
Speaker 1: by the house. Now, if I were doing this for
Speaker 1: some reason, I would be like, oh shit, we've been made.
Speaker 1: We should probably stop doing this.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The police are taking this seriously and we clearly don't
Speaker 1: know what we're doing. But bogg sends a WhatsApp message
Speaker 1: to his colleagues gloating they're seeing ghosts now. Lol, We've
Speaker 1: trapped them into having the police out in front of
Speaker 1: their house. They're so scared at all we did was
Speaker 1: threatened to murder them. We've got them jumping in shadows.
Speaker 1: Now are not seeing ghosts, they are seeing obvious criminal activity.
Speaker 1: And the police have seen that activity now too, and
Speaker 1: filmed it several times. A Natick. Detective who's trying to
Speaker 1: Natick is like the suburb or whatever of Boston where
Speaker 1: this is all happening, figures out what's going on, and
Speaker 1: he tracks the payment for the pizzas that had been
Speaker 1: sent to the Steiner's house because they had to pay
Speaker 1: for some of them, and they found out that the
Speaker 1: pizzas had been paid for with a debit gift debit
Speaker 1: card purchased in Silicon Valley, within a couple miles of
Speaker 1: eBay corporate headquarters. The rental cars were also traced directly
Speaker 1: back to Bog's team, who were all eBay employees. Bog
Speaker 1: the CIA man had taken virtually no precautions to protect
Speaker 1: their identity from the New York Times quote. On August
Speaker 1: twenty first, the detective showed up at the Ritz Carlton
Speaker 1: to see miss After miss Z dodged him, the detective
Speaker 1: called her phone as mister Bog was hustling her to
Speaker 1: the airport. Mister Bog answered, pretended he was her husband,
Speaker 1: and played dumb. Miss Z's flight was not for hours,
Speaker 1: so they got a hotel room at the airport to
Speaker 1: hide out. Mister Bogg sat on the couch and played
Speaker 1: a clip from the two thousand and three comedy Old School,
Speaker 1: in which a husband answers the door to a fellow
Speaker 1: who says, I'm here for the gang Bang. He kept
Speaker 1: watching it over and over and laughing, telling miss Z
Speaker 1: to lighten up.
Speaker 2: I feel like some listeners, because the nature of this show,
Speaker 2: are waiting for us to get to the point where
Speaker 2: the eBay execu you know, like have this couple killed.
Speaker 2: We never get there. If the story had just been
Speaker 2: this person wrote a bunch of stuff that eBay thought
Speaker 2: was financially damaging, and they had hired a hitman to
Speaker 2: have them murdered, I wouldn't have brought the story to
Speaker 2: you because that's the kind of thing you think goes on.
Speaker 2: This is so stupid and juvenile and weird. That's what
Speaker 2: draw me to the story, because it's not just what
Speaker 2: they did. Is this is not the most evil thing.
Speaker 1: We've heard about inside on this show, but it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it is illustrative of a thought process that
Speaker 1: in other organizations does lead to worse things. Right like this,
Speaker 1: this kind of escalation of derangement and escalation of force
Speaker 1: is not irrelevant if you're kind of concerned about how
Speaker 1: people with power use it to hurt other people. Right,
Speaker 1: This is just a particularly absurd example of that. I
Speaker 1: think is a good way to look at it.
Speaker 2: There's so many things at play here, because there's just
Speaker 2: the corporate culture, and there's this weird group think, and
Speaker 2: there's this way these guys are all egging each other on,
Speaker 2: and the way the paranoia, the type of corporate paranoia
Speaker 2: that you see with Elon Musk, Right, he seems convinced
Speaker 2: that every rando on Twitter is capable of taking him down.
Speaker 2: That guy who's like, you know what's posting the location
Speaker 2: of his private plane, He's like, well, they're trying to
Speaker 2: get me killed. They're trying to assassinate me. And it's
Speaker 2: this weird type of madness that people who are not
Speaker 2: acclimated to Twitter, I guess, or to the Internet somehow.
Speaker 2: It's a type of madness. And I'm fascinated by this
Speaker 2: because the outcome is exactly plays exactly the way if
Speaker 2: there's like a Danny McBride movie about, yes, this type
Speaker 2: of he.
Speaker 1: Would be the perfect guy to cast as Jim in this.
Speaker 2: Where the guys like evil but also dumb, and he's
Speaker 2: not harmless, but like if they had broken into that garage,
Speaker 2: and if she had caught them in the garage, I
Speaker 2: don't know what would have happened. The guy was going
Speaker 2: to go in with a crowbar.
Speaker 1: He probably had a gun. We have to assume this
Speaker 1: guy probably carries a gun with them.
Speaker 2: All.
Speaker 1: He's got a police captain with him too, so that
Speaker 1: guy could have had a piece, you know.
Speaker 2: And he's you know, and he thinks he's been given
Speaker 2: blank check to burn this person down. Like anything, anything
Speaker 2: in all caps beats it over and over again, you'd
Speaker 2: do anything that's so weird. It's so weird.
Speaker 1: I do think you actually nailed the casting though. Danny
Speaker 1: McBride is exactly who you'd want for this.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've been picturing him all along.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everything, everything.
Speaker 2: He says, like the way he's so over the top
Speaker 2: dramatic and takes himself so seriously there, but there's such
Speaker 2: like every idea he has is like some people described
Speaker 2: Andy McBride's acting as like a child suddenly in an
Speaker 2: adult's body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it is like that, right where like that
Speaker 1: you have been caught by the cops. You are now
Speaker 1: subject to a serious criminal investigation, and you are just
Speaker 1: playing the same clip from old school over and over
Speaker 1: again as you hide.
Speaker 2: In a hotel like and laughing and laughing you.
Speaker 1: Worked for the CIA anyway, Once it became clear that
Speaker 1: they were now the ones being watched, Bog had his
Speaker 1: people embark on a half assed cover up. He gave
Speaker 1: orders for his team to try again. The way places
Speaker 1: his brain goes are marvelous, so he knows they've been
Speaker 1: blown up. He knows that the cops are looking at
Speaker 1: who was ordering these pizzas and who is operating this
Speaker 1: burner account that's actually making the threats, because clearly that
Speaker 1: person is involved the deliveries, because the threats are time
Speaker 1: with the deliveries now because the fake name mis Pop
Speaker 1: had used for that burner account was a Samoan name,
Speaker 1: Jim Bogg says, you need to go find a Samoan
Speaker 1: that we can blame for all this. That'll that'll throw
Speaker 1: them off the case. Now. My favorite of Bog's CIA
Speaker 1: specials was his attempt to have his team make fake
Speaker 1: dossier's slandering the Steiners and hand those over to the police.
Speaker 1: From the US Attorney's charging document Honor about August fifteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Bog directed Stockwell by a WhatsApp message to
Speaker 1: prepare an eBay person of interest report that listed the
Speaker 1: Steiners as EBA's top persons of interest. Bog wrote in
Speaker 1: the narrative, I need you to write that they have
Speaker 1: made direct threats to eBay, eBay CEO and our employees
Speaker 1: in parentheses, make it up, trying to say just lie
Speaker 1: about them, Just lie about them, pretend there are top threats.
Speaker 2: Puts that in writing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, brilliant. Now while they're trying to cover up an
Speaker 1: ongoing criminal investigation. Stephanie Pop continued harassing the Steiners on Twitter.
Speaker 1: On the night of August twenty first, she used three
Speaker 1: separate Twitter accounts she had created the night before to
Speaker 1: fake a public conversation about the steiners many crimes. One
Speaker 1: account asked another for Ena Steiner's home address, the other
Speaker 1: account posted it, while the other replied, guess I have
Speaker 1: to pay Ena a visit. Pop forwarded the tweets that
Speaker 1: she had just written to Bog, her boss, and Gilbert,
Speaker 1: the retired police captain, and wrote, ENA's really bringing out
Speaker 1: some angry Twitter users. One of the mysteries here is
Speaker 1: like what's going on with you, Stephanie? Like are you
Speaker 1: really angling for a promotion? Because you are you are
Speaker 1: putting way too much effort into this job.
Speaker 2: And again, where's the same where's the voice of reason
Speaker 2: anywhere in the vicinity.
Speaker 1: Of this That voice bounced a while back, not.
Speaker 2: To say, hey, what we're doing is wrong, but to say, hey,
Speaker 2: what we're doing is only this only ends one way,
Speaker 2: with multiple ones of us going to jail. Like you understand,
Speaker 2: I don't care how mad you are at this, lady, Like,
Speaker 2: what we're doing is not going to be effected. It's
Speaker 2: not going to accomplish our goals as a corporation.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Not even like what we're doing is wrong,
Speaker 1: but just like this is clearly not worked. We have
Speaker 1: gone as far as we can go without committing violence,
Speaker 1: and it has not dissuaded them. And also now the
Speaker 1: cops are investigating. Stop tweeting about them, stop tweeting threats
Speaker 1: to them. But the same day that Pop fakes that
Speaker 1: Twitter conversation, Bog has Gilbert execute what he called their
Speaker 1: White Night strategy, which is their last ditch attempt to
Speaker 1: deflect blame for what they'd done. In this they have eBay,
Speaker 1: another chunk of the company, contact the Steiners to offer
Speaker 1: help about their ongoing harassment problems and also reach out
Speaker 1: as EBA to the cops and say, hey, we can
Speaker 1: help you with this investigation if you want. Genius. So
Speaker 1: Gilbert is the guy who sits down with the cops
Speaker 1: because he's a former police captain, and he claims falsely
Speaker 1: not to know any members of the eBay security team
Speaker 1: that the cops know by name and know by name
Speaker 1: we're stalking the Steiners. When Gilbert learns that Natick police
Speaker 1: are investigating that prepaid debit card, he tells Bog, and
Speaker 1: Bog orders the team to cook up a list of
Speaker 1: eBay persons of interest in the Bay that they could
Speaker 1: pin the crime on. Basically, anyone in Silicon Valley who's
Speaker 1: been mean at us on the internet. We can try
Speaker 1: and make it look like they sent the pizzas to
Speaker 1: these this random couple in Boston. Very believable. Gilbert dutifully
Speaker 1: handed over this list of persons of interest to the
Speaker 1: Natick police, who then interrogated him and another eBay employee
Speaker 1: about Stephanie Pop and Veronica Z. Gilbert claimed that Pop
Speaker 1: had ordered Z to investigate the Steiners on her own,
Speaker 1: So at this point he's trying to throw them under
Speaker 1: the bus and make it look like it's just these
Speaker 1: two crazy gals, right, Pop, But this is.
Speaker 2: Where you should be at this point, right where everyone
Speaker 2: in eBay should be is like, Okay, how do I
Speaker 2: make it look like I had nothing to do with this?
Speaker 2: In the lone ear goes down for.
Speaker 1: This right right. And obviously Pop especially is out of
Speaker 1: pocket on this, but they didn't start this. Right now,
Speaker 1: Pop does not help her case though, by continuing to
Speaker 1: harass the Steiners through Twitter, posting this On August twenty second,
Speaker 1: the Gay Day, Gilbert met with the Natick police and
Speaker 1: she like cites their newsletters Twitter account twenty years of
Speaker 1: lies and destroying families. Don't be proud of that, you
Speaker 1: worthless bitch. I will destroy your family and business too,
Speaker 1: see how you like it? And then in another message,
Speaker 1: when are we gonna visit her in Natick? Question mark?
Speaker 1: Question mark? Question mark? And she spells all of this
Speaker 1: and just just the a way people don't actually even
Speaker 1: type on the Internet. But I feel like that's that's
Speaker 1: almost punching down at this point. Now, by this stage
Speaker 1: in the degradation of this whole case, what's happening has
Speaker 1: finally reached eBay's legal team, and these are finally the
Speaker 1: first time anyone at eBay who is an intelligent person
Speaker 1: finds out what Jim and his team have been doing
Speaker 1: at the we'll say suggestion maybe, but not in a
Speaker 1: legally binding way of the CEO and eBay as lawyers go,
Speaker 1: what the fuck you have been doing?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 2: How much money would you pay to be able to
Speaker 2: magically transport yourself to the room in the moment they
Speaker 2: found out fully what had been happening.
Speaker 1: Priceless, just beautiful. Yeah, I would look house.
Speaker 2: To be able to go just see them, see this
Speaker 2: room full of lawyers for this whatever twenty billion dollar corporation,
Speaker 2: and have it explained fully what exactly had been done,
Speaker 2: including with emails you sent them spiders, expensed rental cars.
Speaker 1: Flights, Yeah, you had a cop spray paint what on
Speaker 1: their house? Oh?
Speaker 2: Because you thought what?
Speaker 1: Because?
Speaker 2: Explain to me again why you you thought this was
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus, I can't.
Speaker 1: A legal team starts to ship bricks and they also
Speaker 1: start asking questions of Bog and Bog panics and he
Speaker 1: calls Wimer, who is the communications like secretary. He's the
Speaker 1: like the one step down from the CEO. Right, he's
Speaker 1: the guy that Winnig is usually complaining to, and he's
Speaker 1: Bog's like person of contact on the c suite. So
Speaker 1: Jim leaves this message on Wimer's cell phone after the
Speaker 1: lawyers reach out to him. Hi, Wimer, this is Jim
Speaker 1: Bog's personal self. My team ran an op on our
Speaker 1: friend in Boston. Nothing illegal occurred, and we were actually
Speaker 1: intending to team up with her and get her on
Speaker 1: our side in a positive manner. However, small town police
Speaker 1: got a couple rental car plates and tracked it back
Speaker 1: to my people and the hotel we were staying at.
Speaker 1: They sent a note to eBay Investigations, who then passed
Speaker 1: it to legal and they are conducting an internal investigation
Speaker 1: on us. We are cooperating, but I know they realize
Speaker 1: something is off. We will continue to cooperate, but not
Speaker 1: sure how long we can keep this up. If there
Speaker 1: is any way to get some top cover, that would
Speaker 1: be great. If not, I just wanted you to have
Speaker 1: a head up because they are aware that multiple members
Speaker 1: of our team are not a fan of that website,
Speaker 1: to include David and his wife. Again, no crime was
Speaker 1: committed and the local police don't have a case. I
Speaker 1: don't want our legal team to give them one. Let
Speaker 1: me know if you want to discuss this weekend, you
Speaker 1: want to get that message from you here again, can't
Speaker 1: emphasize enough. No crimes were committed. We wanted to get
Speaker 1: them on our side with the spiders that we sent them.
Speaker 2: The level of sophistication. Ry thinks. I know what's going
Speaker 2: to throw the cops off. I'm gonna send a message
Speaker 2: stating that we didn't do a crime.
Speaker 1: No crimes were committed. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2: They will cancel the investigation when they hear that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh no, guys, No, no, he said they didn't do
Speaker 2: any crimes. Yeah, we owe him an apology. I just
Speaker 2: heard the message. No he said they didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we repeatedly said no crimes were committed. Could not
Speaker 1: have been clear about that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: From this point on, the game was up. A flurry
Speaker 1: of deletions of text messages followed, right alongside messages from
Speaker 1: the company legal counsel not to do that. Please, for
Speaker 1: the love of God, don't delete your messages. That will
Speaker 1: just make all this worse. Please stop committing crimes now.
Speaker 1: Mister Winnig, the CEO, had been smart enough to avoid
Speaker 1: giving any direct orders to carry out illegal acts in
Speaker 1: a way that we can prove, or at least he
Speaker 1: had been vague enough to give his extremely expensive lawyers
Speaker 1: the wiggle room they needed. I can't. I have no
Speaker 1: evidence that he committed any kind of crime. He has
Speaker 1: not been convicted of a crime, no evidence that he
Speaker 1: personally had anything deleted. He was, however, implicated in aspects
Speaker 1: of the breaking scandal in a way that I think
Speaker 1: we have adequately laid out here, right. And so when
Speaker 1: all of this comes out, and this starts becoming the
Speaker 1: news articles that you read and then sent me a
Speaker 1: message saying you should do this as an episode, it
Speaker 1: has become clear to everybody Devin Winning can't stay CEO
Speaker 1: of eBay. He resigns later that same month with an
Speaker 1: exit pay package of fifty seven million dollars fair salary
Speaker 1: for good word less. You know learned you wasted a
Speaker 1: shitload of the company money on a bar, You lost
Speaker 1: a bunch of market share to Amazon, You presided over
Speaker 1: a company where the security guy carried out a spider crime,
Speaker 1: and then you get fifty seven million to leave. Nice
Speaker 1: work if you can get it.
Speaker 2: To be clear, even if his role in all of
Speaker 2: this had been to not even about the blog lady,
Speaker 2: and to simply be oblivious to what his security team
Speaker 2: was doing in his name, that would be enough to
Speaker 2: get him fired, right, Yes, you would think so without
Speaker 2: clear fifty seven million dollars in my opinion, So.
Speaker 1: We don't get sued. He doesn't get fired. He resigns,
Speaker 1: and he says that I'm not on the same page
Speaker 1: as the board. Right, legally, this is not firing. Do
Speaker 1: I think that what happened was the rich guy version
Speaker 1: of getting fired? Sure, but not in a way that
Speaker 1: he can sue me over saying, because Devin Winnigs seems
Speaker 1: like he might be kind of the guy who does
Speaker 1: some suing. Maybe not. Now, laylow Devon. That's a good
Speaker 1: good advice for all you Devon's out there listening right now.
Speaker 1: By the way, always lay low if you're a Devon. Anyway,
Speaker 1: mister Wimer, who is one step below Winnick, gets caught.
Speaker 1: He stays working for eBay for like another year. But
Speaker 1: he he is the one we know deleted a bunch
Speaker 1: of messages, and specifically he deleted messages between himself and
Speaker 1: bog And who knows what those message may or may
Speaker 1: not have implicated him or winning in, but Weimer is
Speaker 1: fired after this becomes clear, and obviously massively disgraced. He
Speaker 1: never has another Oh no, sorry. He went on to
Speaker 1: run the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley. My bad,
Speaker 1: that's fine, That's probably the guy you want molding young minds,
Speaker 1: though right seems like he'd be good at that. He
Speaker 1: claims that he had no point, no idea what Bog
Speaker 1: was really doing until the story broke, which I don't
Speaker 1: consider very credible, but again, he is not criminally convicted
Speaker 1: of anything. Bog and five other employees are initially charged
Speaker 1: with cyber stocking and a couple of other different crimes
Speaker 1: like interfering with an investigation. Some of the people charged,
Speaker 1: like miss Z, are temporary employees who also immediately lose
Speaker 1: their job with no severance, in addition to becoming functionally
Speaker 1: unemployable as their careers are getting started. And these young
Speaker 1: women that I actually do feel bad for, they did
Speaker 1: get caught up to a degree where like you should
Speaker 1: have known better, But they were very young, much younger
Speaker 1: than Bog. You know, then certainly the C suites at
Speaker 1: this company, and it sucks that they're the ones who
Speaker 1: suffer the most from this, Right, because they are. They
Speaker 1: are seriously fucked as a result of all this, and
Speaker 1: they're not the ones that I think most of the
Speaker 1: blame should actually land on, But that is where most
Speaker 1: of the blame lands now. The attention drawn to the
Speaker 1: case ensures that there are further charges. In July of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, almost a year after the story broke, another
Speaker 1: eBay employee, Philip Cook, is also charged with cyberstalking. Cook
Speaker 1: is a retired decorated police captain, the second police former
Speaker 1: police officer involved in this series of crimes. In addition
Speaker 1: to the CIA man, Cook.
Speaker 4: Had gotten yeah no comment, Yeah yeah, And he had
Speaker 4: been one of these guys who got bored in retirement
Speaker 4: decided to take private security jobs in the tech industry.
Speaker 1: He was brought on as senior manager of Security Operations
Speaker 1: for eBay's Global security team, working directly under Jim Bogg.
Speaker 1: His salary was one hundred and eighty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a year. If you are wondering, one one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty five thousand dollars buys you in terms of actual work.
Speaker 1: Here's a summary of his activities during the height of
Speaker 1: Bog's criminality, written by Ours Technica Cook left for a
Speaker 1: trip to Asia, Europe in the Middle East on August eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. While overseas, where he was traveling alone, mister
Speaker 1: Cook drank heavily, the sentencing memorandum said. On August twentieth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, while in India, mister Cook saw and responded
Speaker 1: to a draft Twitter message from Gilbert That's the other
Speaker 1: former police guy, to which he acquiesced with a thumbs
Speaker 1: up emoji, and later assented to a plan to use
Speaker 1: multiple accounts to send the message string with a copy
Speaker 1: all At this time, Cook was unaware that his co
Speaker 1: conspirators had attempted surveillance in Massachusetts, and he was not
Speaker 1: aware that colleagues might have engaged in role play at
Speaker 1: the victim's house or directed creation a fake person of
Speaker 1: interest reports to conceal their activities. The memorandums said. So
Speaker 1: Cook's defense, you know, as being clearly implicated in all
Speaker 1: of this illegality and in the planning stages of it,
Speaker 1: is I was drunk, and I didn't know that they
Speaker 1: were doing anything right, solid.
Speaker 2: Plant drunk on the other side of the planet.
Speaker 1: Right right now. He would also claim it sentencing that
Speaker 1: the drinking company culture at eBay had led him to
Speaker 1: develop a problem and that the poor judgment that resulted
Speaker 1: from this was part of what had happened. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that's entirely unfair, because Cook claimed that drinking
Speaker 1: on the job at eBay was common and a lot
Speaker 1: of the decisions here do make sense if you add alcohol, right.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of drunk energy too. Yah.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't think he's entirely lying here. Cook, though,
Speaker 1: does make claims that I think were entirely attempts to
Speaker 1: protect himself. For example, he was found to have deleted
Speaker 1: numerous messages with his boss related to the criminal schemes
Speaker 1: that Bog had cooked up. In court, Cook claimed he
Speaker 1: deleted those emails because Bog just sent him so much
Speaker 1: crazy shit he assumed it was all jokes. This does
Speaker 1: not hold up in court. Ultimately, Cook and six other
Speaker 1: eBay employees, including Bog, pled guilty to a variety of charges.
Speaker 1: This included the two members of the senior team the
Speaker 1: senior security team who get convicted are Bog and Cook.
Speaker 1: There are two members of the executive leadership team, Weimer
Speaker 1: and Winnig, who are implicated but not charged. Of the
Speaker 1: people who are convicted. Bog receives the toughest sentence, fifty
Speaker 1: seven months in prison. David Harville, eBay's former global resiliency director,
Speaker 1: gets twenty four months. Stephanie Popp is handed a little
Speaker 1: over a year. Former police Captain Brian Gilbert has pled
Speaker 1: guilty and not yet been sentenced, while Philip Cook got
Speaker 1: eighteen months in federal prison and three years of house arrest.
Speaker 1: eBay agreed to pay three million dollars in order to
Speaker 1: defer prosecution. Now, I will say that seems like a
Speaker 1: slap on the risk from eBay, who I think is
Speaker 1: more responsible than three million dollars of this.
Speaker 2: They pay the three million to this to the couple.
Speaker 1: I think it's a mix of that and like you know, honestly, Jess,
Speaker 1: I will cut in here when I find that out.
Speaker 1: I should have checked on that. I think it's some
Speaker 1: of its damages and some of it's like fines. But
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that litigation is ongoing. They will
Speaker 1: probably wind up paid. They will certainly settle for more.
Speaker 1: This is the result of the criminal investigation. Ina and
Speaker 1: David Steiner are suing eBay, as well as Devin Winnig
Speaker 1: and Steve Weimer, and that's they're suing the other people
Speaker 1: who are all convicted too. And I think there's a
Speaker 1: good chance they are certainly going to settle for something there, right,
Speaker 1: like the Steiner making addiction out of this.
Speaker 2: That the amount that they settle for will be much
Speaker 2: less than the fifty seven million dollars that, yes, that
Speaker 2: guy got. That was the number, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yes, fifty seven million was Winnigs exit package. And Winnig.
Speaker 1: In case you're worried about our buddy, Devin is just fine.
Speaker 1: He is on the board of General Motors to this
Speaker 1: day and as a director at Cruz Audit, the autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicle company. In June of twenty twenty one, he was
Speaker 1: named to the Salesforce Global Advisory Board. So it's good
Speaker 1: to know Devin's still doing great. I'm sure he is
Speaker 1: utilizing their security resources in a responsible and legally ethical manner.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, somewhere, I'm just imagining some eBay employee is right
Speaker 2: now getting fired because they were caught working remote and
Speaker 2: using like a mouse jiggler to appear to be online,
Speaker 2: and they're accused of stealing one hundred and forty dollars
Speaker 2: worth of the company's time. Yeah, and will be fired
Speaker 2: with cause and we'll have difficulty finding another job for
Speaker 2: months or years. And anyway, I.
Speaker 1: Love the justice system and I have no issues with
Speaker 1: any of this. This is all. This is all capitalism
Speaker 1: working the best way it can possibly work.
Speaker 2: No notes, Well, here's the thing. I know that there
Speaker 2: are people like really want to abolish the prison system,
Speaker 2: and I get it. It's not good at reforming people. Well,
Speaker 2: it doesn't do what it's supposed to do other than
Speaker 2: warehouse people for a while. Like in theory, you cannot
Speaker 2: commit another crime while you're locked up in there, unless
Speaker 2: you're committing against your other inmates, which is exactly what happens.
Speaker 2: But I will say that in my perfect utopian society,
Speaker 2: I do not know what I would do with this
Speaker 2: Danny McBride ass freek who drove this whole thing. If
Speaker 2: not prison, I don't know what you'd do with that guy.
Speaker 1: I you know, this is all fantasy stuff, but if
Speaker 1: I were responsible for punishments, not just for Jim but
Speaker 1: for guys like Defan winning, it would be like you
Speaker 1: are going to have a comfortable one bedroom apartment and
Speaker 1: you are going to work forty hours a week at
Speaker 1: a job with you know where you're like doing some
Speaker 1: sort of like direct facing like customer service role. Right,
Speaker 1: Like you're going to be working as a barista, you're
Speaker 1: going to be waiting tables, you're going to be working
Speaker 1: at a call center, some sort of like actual job
Speaker 1: where you do something and you just have to do
Speaker 1: that for a period of years. Because to a guy
Speaker 1: who gets a fifty seven million dollar pay package, I
Speaker 1: can't think of a worse punishment than having to live
Speaker 1: a normal working class life for like five years. You
Speaker 1: have no access to your money, you have no access
Speaker 1: to your vacation homes. You just have to work a
Speaker 1: job every day like a regular person and have no power.
Speaker 1: I think that would be worse than them than going
Speaker 1: to club fed for a couple of years.
Speaker 2: I really do, not even as a punishment, but just
Speaker 2: to acclimate to the world you're living in I think
Speaker 2: the rest of us live in, right.
Speaker 1: I think there's an actual rehabilitative aspect to that. Like
Speaker 1: some number of these people would just stay shitty, but
Speaker 1: a couple of them, you assume, would actually realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: these are the regular people. My entire life has been
Speaker 1: built on fucking over Like it might actually help. I
Speaker 1: don't know not. My primary person for wanting.
Speaker 2: To do the flaw on our plan is that you
Speaker 2: can't do that to their co workers at the Starbucks.
Speaker 2: They're working that because you're in them on those people
Speaker 2: and they do not deserve that.
Speaker 1: We would need a special government run coffee house where
Speaker 1: you know everyone working there is a white collar crime. Hey,
Speaker 1: you want to go to that coffee house and like
Speaker 1: spit on the former CEO of JP Morgan.
Speaker 2: Be the worst place to get coffee?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be dog shit americanas anyway, Jason, you
Speaker 3: have some books, plug them?
Speaker 2: Yes, the book that is out just if you're hearing
Speaker 2: this hot off the presses in the books just a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks away. It is on September twenty fourth.
Speaker 2: It is called I'm starting to worry about this Black
Speaker 2: Box of Doom. It is not a part of any
Speaker 2: series I've ever read before. If you've never read any
Speaker 2: of my books, this is as good a place as
Speaker 2: any to start, even though it is by far the
Speaker 2: most expensive of the books, because it is new that
Speaker 2: it is up for pre order now in every format ebook, audio, hardcover.
Speaker 2: If you're if you are in this after September twenty fourth.
Speaker 2: It's on a shelf at a cool indie bookstore somewhere.
Speaker 2: Go buy it that way instead of getting from Amazon.
Speaker 1: By Jason's books, I always do, and Jase, before we
Speaker 1: were all that, actually I should have asked you this
Speaker 1: right after we finished. Does any of this make more
Speaker 1: sense to you? You had asked me to do this
Speaker 1: Now that we've gone over, I think everything available on
Speaker 1: this case. Does any of this make any more sense?
Speaker 1: Or is it still just as much of like a mystery?
Speaker 2: No? But I have been in times in my life
Speaker 2: I've been in a circle of other weirdos and we've
Speaker 2: gotten worked up about something that in retrospect, looking back,
Speaker 2: especially in my early twenties, looking bank, it's like it
Speaker 2: was somebody else, you know, we got really mad about
Speaker 2: somebody online or something. In looking back, it's like, man,
Speaker 2: we were just we had nothing else going on in
Speaker 2: our lives, and we got two worked up. I get
Speaker 2: that dynamic, especially among a bunch of dudes, or a
Speaker 2: bunch of dudes in a bunch of young women or
Speaker 2: whatever the mix of people here was. I cannot make
Speaker 2: heads or tails of why they chose this particular person,
Speaker 2: this woman this blogger. I can't. I can't get there,
Speaker 2: because every organization in the world, every company, every every group,
Speaker 2: every club has got somebody out there writing mildly critical
Speaker 2: stuff about them that doesn't it's not unique. You have
Speaker 2: it wherever you go. I've had that since the late nineties.
Speaker 2: I've you know, it's not fun to have people criticizing you,
Speaker 2: but it's just part of being a public figure, even
Speaker 2: a minor public figure. I can't get I can't. I
Speaker 2: guess I would have to be in the room. I
Speaker 2: can't think of another example where this has played out
Speaker 2: this way. Again, Companies pulled dirty tricks, but it's cases
Speaker 2: where they have, you know, they're overthrowing a government to
Speaker 2: try to get cheaper labor on the rubber plantation. It's
Speaker 2: not it's not this whatever this was.
Speaker 1: No, it's so weird to because like I have had
Speaker 1: death threats, I've had what I thought really unfair criticisms
Speaker 1: of me online. I had a guy because of who
Speaker 1: I was, break my hand at a street fight with
Speaker 1: a baton, and like, after I found out he'd lost
Speaker 1: his job in his car, I was like, I probably
Speaker 1: don't need to keep going after this guy. Sounds like
Speaker 1: that's about enough, right, Like I didn't have the and
Speaker 1: maybe I should have, but like I didn't have the
Speaker 1: energy to get and that guy broke my boat. Like
Speaker 1: I can't get in the head of this guy going
Speaker 1: after this lady and making very mild criticisms. It's just wild.
Speaker 2: And I get the issue with the drinking and there
Speaker 2: being a culture of drinking at a company that that's
Speaker 2: definitely a thing that occurs. And I can definitely get
Speaker 2: a bunch of dudes getting drunk and thinking it's very
Speaker 2: funny to find a website where you can order animal fetuses,
Speaker 2: and it's like, oh, let's mail her one of these,
Speaker 2: ha ha. It's when you're on the plane flying to
Speaker 2: her house that I think you have to wake up
Speaker 2: and think. Me and there's a record of us by
Speaker 2: these plans must our minds. We're going to trespass on
Speaker 2: her property. We're gonna put a tracker on her car,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna follow her around, and we're gonna start intivity,
Speaker 2: like we're gonna let's be clear. Maybe you could argue
Speaker 2: that the stuff we did mailing her weird stuff is
Speaker 2: a misdemeanor. Maybe you can get off like that's something
Speaker 2: chart type of charges the company can make go away.
Speaker 2: Once you show up at somebody's house, and once you've
Speaker 2: bought a crowbar to try to break into their house,
Speaker 2: that's now real crime stuff. And then once the cops
Speaker 2: fight out you're there, maybe on the orders of the
Speaker 2: freaking CEO of eBay. That's now front page news, that's
Speaker 2: now an article in the New York Times. That's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing you can't possibly be unaware of. So
Speaker 2: I get it. The world is full of weirdos and
Speaker 2: people I don't understand. But it's one thing to not understand,
Speaker 2: say Jeffrey Dahmer, who clearly was extremely ill and had
Speaker 2: totally lost touch with reality. And here where you had
Speaker 2: a bunch of people sending messages back and forth, in
Speaker 2: all of them nodding along with like, yes, crusher, burn
Speaker 2: her to the ground, leave nothing but ashes behind. I
Speaker 2: don't get it. I'll never get it. I'm glad that
Speaker 2: I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Well, that is our final word on the story until
Speaker 1: next time. If your boss tells you, hey, I need
Speaker 1: you to fly to Boston in order to place a
Speaker 1: GPS tracker on this blogger's car, don't do that. You
Speaker 1: might go to prison for a year. Anyway, this has
Speaker 1: been Life Advice with Robert Evans, a co production of
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards Jason Thank you for coming on the
Speaker 1: show by Jason's book Slash Books. We're Done. Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards is a production a cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 1: from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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