eBay Governance Crisis: Cyberstalking Case Ethics, Compliance & Disclosure Failures Call For Shareholder Scrutiny
As the eBay cyberstalking scandal civil case continues toward trial, new details have emerged raising serious questions about historic and ongoing corporate governance, compliance, disclosure and ethics failures at the company.
The bizarre corporate plot unfolded in the summer of 2019, targeting journalists Ina and David Steiner for their reporting on eBay at EcommerceBytes and seeking to unmask the identity of unsuckEBAY (also known as FidoMaster/Dan Davis) an anonymous source and commenter who sparked the ire of top executives at the company.
Court records revealed sordid details of the harassment which included disturbing deliveries, threatening messages, doxxing, and both cyber and real life stalking at the hands of high-level eBay security personnel.
Liz Morton
Sr Director Security Jim Baugh, Director of Global Resiliency David Harville, Security Manager Philip Cooke, Sr Manager Special Operations Brian Gilbert, Sr Manager Global Intelligence Stephanie Popp, Global Intelligence Manager Stephanie Stockwell, and Security Analyst Veronica Zea all pleaded guilty and have been sentenced for their roles in these crimes.
eBay signed a deferred prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice which forced the company to admit to a detailed recitation of relevant facts involving six felony offenses with eBay paying a $3 Million fine and undergoing 3 years of enhanced compliance monitoring in order to avoid further criminal prosecution related to this matter.
The ongoing ~$500 Million civil lawsuit names the seven criminal defendants plus eBay, ex-CEO Devin Wenig, ex-Communications Chief Steve Wymer, ex-SVP Global Operations Wendy Jones, and security company Progressive F.O.R.C.E Concepts (PFC), claiming direction and support for the harassment came from the very top of eBay's c-suite.
In order to understand the full implications of the scandal, it's important to look at the bigger picture of who was on the Board of Directors and broader corporate issues which were impacting the company at that time.
Executive frustration with EcommerceBytes and Fidomaster/unsuckEBAY had grown exponentially in 2018-2019 with commentary on corporate issues being of particular interest to eBay - such as mass layoffs and management shakeups, an article about Wenig's oversized compensation package and revelations that Wenig had built an on campus pub, Walker's West which resulted in Jones allegedly telling Baugh to "deal with the issue off the radar since comms and legal couldn’t handle it.”
When activist investor Elliott Management took a stake and publicly called for changes at the company in early 2019, the C-suite put increasing pressure on Baugh to "handle" perceived negative coverage with orders to "take down" Ina Steiner and unmask unsuckEBAY.
Wymer (Executive 2) requested Baugh to conduct an in-depth investigation of the FidoMaster/unsuckEBAY Twitter account in March 2019, looking to identify the person behind the account and trying to find any connection to EcommerceBytes.
Text messages between Wenig and Wymer showed increasingly amped up reactions to EcommerceBytes' coverage, including a message from Wenig directing Wymer to "take her down."
Days later, on June 8, Gilbert traveled from California to Massachusetts to engage in an act of vandalism clearly intended as a warning - tagging "Fidomaster" on the Steiners' fence.
The escalation continued throughout the following months until on August 1st, 2019, Wenig (Executive 1) exchanged texts with Wymer (Executive 2), saying it was time to "take down" Ina Steiner.
Wymer then forwarded that text to Baugh, expressing his "hatred" while committing to "embrace managing any bad fallout."
In an August 6, 2019 email, Wenig expressed his desire to see the unsuckEBAY Twitter account shut down and assigned the task to Baugh, with Wymer and Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber copied.
Wymer said he had previously discussed the issue with Baugh and explored all angles with Twitter, but had been unable to get @unsuckEBAY killed.
Oh Huber echoed the frustration, but her and another member of eBay legal, Aaron Johnson advised there wasn't a strong claim to appeal to Twitter.
Baugh responded that his team had been investigating for weeks and he was close to discovering the identity and location of unsuckEBAY.
Oh Huber accepted that answer with a smiley face emoji, saying she would hold off on pursuing further legal steps in light of Baugh's investigation.
Wymer responded again the next day, making it clear how utterly vexed by the situation he was and that any effort to "solve" the problem should be explored...Whatever. It. Takes.
While Jones was not originally included in this email chain, excerpts from court documents show Baugh forwarded at least 2 of the emails to her on August 6, 2019.
At the same time, Baugh was also separately texting Wenig about his efforts to out unsuckEBAY and copied Jones for "visibility" - which Jones acknowledged with a thumbs up.
Shortly after these emails and texts, Baugh deployed what the US Attorney's Office called a "White Knight Strategy" whereby he and his team would anonymously unleash a barrage of bizarre deliveries, send threatening messages and engage in both online and in person stalking with the goal of being able to come in officially as eBay to offer to "assist" the Steiners in hopes of creating goodwill in order to get them to reveal the identity of Fidomaster/unsuckEBAY.
Liz Morton
Sabbaticals
After the criminal campaign unraveled, eBay hired outside counsel at Morgan Lewis to assist in conducting an internal investigation and creating a presentation for the US Attorney's Office.
While some of the investigation may have been withheld or sealed under claims of attorney client or work product privilege, nowhere in the parts of the presentation which have been made public does eBay or Morgan Lewis mention that both Wenig and Jones were on concurrent, overlapping sabbaticals when the bulk of the criminal activity occurred between August 6th and August 23rd, 2019.
In fact, the executive sabbaticals appears to have first been revealed in Veronica Zea's sentencing letter filed on October 21, 2022, where she claims, the security team was under pressure to uncover the identity of the person behind the FidoMaster/unsuckEBAY account before Wenig and Jones were back in the office in late August of 2019.
The overlapping sabbaticals became a subject of interest in the civil case when the Steiners amended their complaint to add Wendy Jones to the list of named defendants on March 1, 2023, seeking records through discovery that they believed might show the concurrent time away was an intentional effort to provide a cover of plausible deniability for the executives.
eBay acknowledged the exact dates of the respective sabbaticals in response to these allegations on January 12, 2024, admitting that Wenig was out of the office from July 29, 2019 to August 26, 2019 and Jones was away from July 25, 2019 to August 26, 2019, but denying any allegations of a plausible deniability conspiracy.
Regardless of whether allegations of a conspiracy are ultimately proven in this case, it would be more than fair for investors to question the Board's wisdom in allowing concurrent executive sabbaticals - especially since the company had activist investors Elliott Management and Starboard Value breathing down their necks at the time these leaves were approved.
The lack of public disclosure about the sabbaticals raises serious concerns about whether any internal post mortem analysis explored how this policy may have created a breakdown in oversight and chain of command and how that could have contributed to the criminal events which occurred.
If that type of root cause assessment was done - was it provided to shareholders along with detailed action steps for changes being implemented to prevent reoccurance?
If that assessment was not done, or not disclosed to shareholders - why not?
Jones was forced to provide documentation showing her sabbatical had been planned for over a year, though it was only officially approved in January 2019, as well as an email discussion with then Chief People Officer Kristin Yetto about where and when she planned to travel.
Wenig was allowed to file these two documents regarding his sabbatical under seal, preventing any further public scrutiny of what role his leave may have played in the events which transpired.
However, being out of the office clearly did not stop both Wenig and Jones from engaging in emails and texts leading up to the escalation of the harassment campaign by Baugh and his team.
Executive Separations: Resignations or Firings?
That same internal investigation determined Wenig and Wymer's tone and communications were "inappropriate" but not, eBay believed, criminal.
Once the scandal became public, eBay made it clear that Wymer had been fired for cause in September 2019 in connection with these events, though that fact didn't stop him from landing a new gig as CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of the Silicon Valley, thanks to his close ties with then San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo - announced on Twitter with his signature "whatever it takes" hashtag.
But the company has been much less transparent about the reasons for Wenig's departure, publicly positioning the change in leadership as a resignation, with then Board chair Thomas Tierney saying at the time Wenig was "stepping down" due to "a number of considerations", while greenlighting the payout of a ~$57 million severance package.
eBay declined to further elaborate on what those considerations may have been, but Wenig took to Twitter to issue his own statement, framing the situation as a mutual decision due to differences with the Board.
At the time, both the Board of Directors and Wenig were aware of what had occurred in Natick, MA, as well as the ongoing investigations into the events and firing of other eBay personnel involved - but they chose not to publicly disclose anything about it.
Instead, the scandal only became public knowledge 9 months later when the first criminal charges were announced in June 2020.
With no disclosure of that crucial and material information, media and investors made the obvious conclusion that Wenig's departure was simply the fallout of pressure from activist investors.
Lauren Debter
Wenig's separation agreement, signed September 24 2019, confusingly refers to his departure both as a resignation and as a termination other than for cause - which suggests this was likely a "negotiated resignation", carefully designed to allow the Board to still pay out a very generous exit package while avoiding additional public scrutiny.
While much of the letter appears to be standard boiler plate, some sections raise serious governance, compliance and disclosure concerns in light of eBay's knowledge of these events, ongoing investigations and the criminal and civil cases which were sure to come in the months following Wenig's departure.
For example: the section on Cooperation obligates Wenig to "use reasonable efforts" to "assist and cooperate with the defense or prosecution of any claim" which may be made against the company in connection with any ongoing or future investigations.
Importantly, this was not some hypothetical "just in case" scenario - eBay and Wenig were both aware of the events which had occurred and the fact that there were ongoing investigations into the matter at the time this letter was written and signed.
In return, eBay promised to reimburse Wenig for any reasonable out-of-pocket expenses and attorney's fees incurred in connection with providing that assistance, which raises even more questions about who may be footing the bill for some or all of Wenig's legal expenses in the ongoing civil lawsuit.
Wenig's letter also included a mutual non-disparagement clause binding against him and existing members of eBay's Board and named executive officers, which explicitly allows both sides to provide accurate and full answers to any questions in any legal process or investigation - again showing that both sides were well aware of ongoing investigations and the likelihood of criminal and/or civil cases to come.
eBay's standard clawback policy for officers employed at the VP level or above states incentive compensation may be forfeited or required to be paid back in instances of "a material violation of the Company's Code of Business Conduct" or action that causes "material financial or reputational harm to the Company" - this scandal would certainly qualify for both by any objective measure.
And Wenig's separation letter explicitly states the agreement does not prohibit eBay from seeking to enforce the clawback provisions, that the right to recover would also apply to any payments set forth in this agreement, and that nothing in the agreement restricts eBay's ability to seek enforcement of their clawback rights.
In response to allegations in the civil suit, eBay has confirmed that Wenig's severance was subject to this clawback policy and the Board did have meetings to discuss whether to act on that provision, but ultimately decided not to proceed.
It's surprising that shareholder rights firms have not further investigated that decision, but it's possible they may not be aware, since it was buried within the thousands of pages of documents produced in this case and has not received wider media attention - just like the overlapping sabbaticals and the business continuity planning failures they represent have flown under the radar.
However, shareholders (and the SEC) may want to take another look at the situation in light of a September 2024 deposition where Director Ethics Counsel, Anagha Apte, was asked about Board meeting minutes discussing the decision to terminate Wenig's employment.
Apte testified under oath that Wenig's departure was a firing, not a resignation, and that it was directly related to this scandal.
That would certainly seem to be a significant material difference to what was publicly disclosed in 2019.
Other Executive Shuffling
SVP Global Operations Wendy Jones was not included in the initial filing of the civil suit, likely because at that time it was not widely known outside of eBay that she was Baugh's direct supervisor, that some of her communications regarding EcommerceBytes and Fidomaster/unsuckEBAY were also "inappropriate", and that she was also on sabbatical when the bulk of the criminal events occurred.
After Zea's sentencing letter and other documents in the criminal cases provided more details, the Steiners added Jones to their amended civil suit in March 2023.
However, eBay would have obviously been aware of her position reporting directly to Wenig and Baugh's position reporting directly to her, as well as the sabbaticals and any other information that would have been contained in emails which were protected under attorney client or work product privilege in this case.
Privilege logs and other documents show Jones was interviewed as part of the internal investigation on August 30th and September 6th, 2019 but inexplicably, she was allowed to continue in her role as SVP Global Ops through December 2020, well into current CEO Jamie Iannone's first year at the helm of the company.
When she departed, she took an $11M+ severance package, in addition to the $11M bonus Wenig had granted her in 2018, $8M of which was a retention bonus.
Presumably, the standard clawback policy would have also applied to Jones, though it is not known if the Board ever discussed potentially exercising it.
While Jones' separation letter did contain some of the same boilerplate sections, it does not contain anything similar to the section on Cooperation in Wenig's letter.
One other notable exception: rather than the generic reference to existing members of the board or named executive officers that was in Wenig's letter, Jones' letter specifically only calls out two executives who agreed not to disparage her - Jamie Iannone and Marie Oh Huber.
That wording is particularly odd when you consider a more generic blanket provision applicable to all board members and executive officers would have included Iannone, Oh Huber and others without drawing undue attention to any specific people.
Which begs the question - what do Iannone and Oh Huber know that is worthy of such explicit terms in this agreement?
Oh Huber retained her position as Chief Legal Officer until she stepped down in July 2024, with Ken Ebanks taking the role on an interim basis until Samantha Wellington joined the company in October 2024.
Liz Morton
As a result of eBay's internal investigation into the criminal activity, the Safety & Security unit was moved from the Global Operations division (under Jones' purview) to the Legal Department (under Oh Huber) in 2020.
Molly Finn, VP & Chief Compliance Officer at the time who reported directly to Oh Huber, was also copied on several related emails, according to redacted privilege logs included in court filings.
Finn still works at eBay, though she moved out of the compliance role in December 2021 (2+ years after these events) to Vice President, Deputy General Counsel M&A and Securities.
Were there red flags and holes in eBay's ethics and compliance procedures that were missed, allowing these criminal acts to occur on her watch?
Unfortunately, much of her correspondence in this matter is likely to remain out of the public record under privilege, so we may never know what she knew or how she responded to emails related to these events.
But public records show the Securities and Exchange Commission sent a letter on September 20, 2022 with some pointed questions about eBay's April 21, 2022 Proxy Statement - including directly asking for disclosure as to whether or not eBay had a Chief Compliance Officer at that time and, if so, to whom that person reported.
Notably, it was Molly Finn who responded, using her title of VP Deputy General Counsel (leaving off the M&A part), and she glossed over the Compliance Officer question, neither explicitly stating she no longer held that title nor confirming whether or not eBay had anyone in that role at that time.
Per the SEC's request, eBay addressed the issue in "future proxy disclosures" with the Proxy Statement filed on April 28, 2023 purporting to lay the matter to rest by stating "Our Audit Committee has an annual cadence to review the risks included in its remit, including quarterly meetings regarding ethics programs with our Chief Compliance Officer (who reports to our Chief Legal Officer, with direct access to the Audit Committee Chair)."
But who was the Chief Compliance Officer reporting to Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber and supposedly having quarterly meetings with the Audit Committee at this time since eBay did not hire Ryan Jones for that role until August 2023?
Was Molly Finn still acting in this capacity even though her title had been changed in December 2021 and if so, why was that not disclosed anywhere? If someone else occupied that role, who was it and why were they not named?
The scope of the compliance monitoring eBay agreed to in 2024 as part of the deferred prosecution agreement suggested the DOJ may be concerned about a wide variety of business practices, opening eBay's entire operation up to additional legal and regulatory scrutiny.
Those concerns may have included due diligence and disclosure failures in eBay's October 2022 acquisition of trading card marketplace TCGPlayer, which led to the formation of the first US labor union in eBay's history and the sudden departure of Chief Accounting Officer Brian Doerger in March 2023.
eBay should have been able to anticipate and prepare for the possibility of facing unionization efforts following the acquisition, given that the agreement initially allowed Founder Chedy Hampson and other management personnel to remain in an environment with a documented history of "strained" labor relations which led to a previous union drive in March 2020 that received national media attention and public support from Senator Bernie Sanders.
Molly Finn directly oversaw the TCGPlayer acquisition in her role as VP Deputy General Counsel M&A and Securities and would have been responsible for key due diligence and risk assessment - including whether there had been a history of organizing activity or prior labor issues at the company eBay intended to acquire.
Clearly, she either failed to catch and flag the labor relations risk or she was aware of it, but failed to disclose in a timely manner - eBay didn't reveal the potential risks that unionization efforts could bring to investors until their 10-K filed on February 23, 2023, which was ~4 months after the acquisition closed, ~1 month after TCGPlayer authenticators filed their union petition, and only ~2 weeks before those workers won their vote to formally establish TCGUnion-CWA.
If Finn was still acting as Chief Compliance Officer between December 2021 and August 2023, while also holding the title of Vice President, Deputy General Counsel M&A and Securities, that would represent a significant conflict of interest.
The Chief Compliance Officer typically serves a crucial function in the due diligence and risk assessment process and keeping the company's compliance efforts independent from its business strategies would be critical to ensure transparency reporting, regulatory filings, and stakeholder communication were handled properly both pre and post merger.
Allowing the same person to serve as both VP of M&A and Compliance Officer could potentially create conflicts that may affect the accuracy of financial disclosures and effectiveness of internal controls.
Finn's LinkedIn profile has recently changed again, removing M&A from her title and instead moving it to her job description, which also now includes the fact that she leads eBay's antitrust legal work.
That's a particularly ironic update, since the acquisition of TCGPlayer which Finn led has now also exposed eBay to increased scrutiny and a potential FTC investigation for alleged deceptive and anti-competitive business practices.
Liz Morton
Could the fact that Molly Finn was Chief Compliance Officer at the time of the cyberstalking scandal and then became Deputy General Counsel M&A and Securities have something to do with the DOJ's interest in having M&A due diligence explicitly called out for additional monitoring?
Liz Morton
If so, it's interesting that eBay explicitly stated in their 2024 proxy statement that they separated internal management of ethics and compliance in 2023 and even more interesting that they did not disclose at that time who the Chief Ethics Officer was and to whom that person reported.
It wasn't until June 2024, when VP Litigation, IP Assets, Site Trust Aaron Johnson updated his LinkedIn profile, that we learned he had been promoted to Chief Ethics Officer, backdated to September 2023.
Yes - the same Aaron Johnson who was part of that August 2019 email chain, including being the main recipient of the "Whatever. It. Takes" email from Wymer.
Given the criminal events that occurred following this email, it would appear neither Johnson nor Oh Huber took action in their respective positions to make sure eBay's head of security handled executive "vexation" within established legal bounds or reported this troubling and inappropriate communication from Wymer through any of the internal compliance or ethics channels which existed at that time - or, if they did, those channels obviously failed.
As eBay's labor troubles continue with multiple NLRB complaints and lawsuits filed by employees, including one revealing concerning allegations of discrimination and retaliation, shareholders would be right to question why eBay didn't bring in outside talent with a background in corporate governance and ethics to fill this crucial position, rather than internally promoting an intellectual property litigator with tangential ties to the biggest scandal in the company's 30 year history.
Current Leadership
One would think a Board of Directors which took its fiduciary duties seriously would have made it a top priority to bring in new blood with a strong, innovative vision for the future to clean house and lead the company through the crisis they knew was coming - but instead, eBay brought back Jamie Iannone to take the helm as CEO in April 2020, just 2 months before news of the scandal became public.
Shockingly, Wendy Jones revealed in her response to plaintiffs' interrogatories that she believes Iannone only learned about the criminal conduct in these events after joining the company.
If that is true, it would show a stunning lack of business continuity planning, ethics and good governance to throw a new CEO to the wolves with no knowledge of the imminent major legal and PR crisis which loomed ahead.
Whether Iannone was fully read into the situation before accepting the job or not, it's become clear during his tenure that eBay is simply hoping to weather the storm with their heads in the sand rather than taking bold, proactive action to show buyers, sellers and shareholders the company has taken the situation seriously and made significant changes to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
Considering the role that exposing Wenig's vanity project on-campus bar played in catalyzing the cyberstalking events, not to mention the fact that multiple criminal defendants in this case blamed an alcohol-soaked hard drinking corporate culture for their "poor judgement", a good first step would have been to shut Walker's West down and repurpose the historic Little Blue House back into offices or a non-alcoholic gathering spot for employees.
Liz Morton
Instead, Iannone simply rebranded it as The Sellar in hopes of distancing the location from Wenig's disgraced legacy while continuing to serve free beer and wine to employees at a daily happy hour, despite multiple rounds of layoffs and other cost cutting measures which might suggest the company should reconsider their priorities.
eBay also recently hosted a hybrid fireside chat as part of a public/private partnership with the US State Department Overseas Security Advisory Council, instructing Diplomatic Security Service special agents on concepts and best practices of Executive Protection.
That's an interesting choice for a company that is still under DOJ-mandated compliance monitoring due to multiple federal felonies committed using company resources by their security department led by Jim Baugh, who claims to have previously worked for the CIA.
Eriq Gardner
eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's decades long history with the CIA, State Department, USAID and other government agencies has also been well documented by MintPress News, and Yasha Levine, the author of Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet.
Alexander Rubinstein, Max Blumenthal
Yasha Levine
The corporate security apparatus in place at eBay in 2018-2019 didn't just appear overnight or in a vacuum - a fact that both the company and the Department of Justice don't seem very keen to acknowledge or investigate deeper.
Notably, Omidyar was still an active member of eBay's Board of Directors when these criminal events occured.
He stepped down in September 2020, 3 months after the scandal became public, but is still a major shareholder and retains the honorary title of Director Emeritus.
The Wall Street Journal
That honorary title may not come with voting rights, but that doesn't necessarily mean Omidyar no longer has any influence at the company.
There are still 4 current Board members who were serving alongside Omidyar when the scandal happened - including Paul Pressler, who as Chair of the Compensation Committee in 2019 would have been pivotal in decisions about Wenig's exit package and clawbacks and who now serves as Chairman of the Board.
More directly, Shripriya Mahesh was appointed to eBay's BOD in 2023 after previously rising to VP Product Management and Product Strategy in 2006, then joining Omidyar's First Look Media as Head Of Product in 2013 and later becoming Partner Emerging Tech at Omidyar Network.
While serving on the eBay Board of Directors, Mahesh has actively maintained her position as Founding Partner of Spero Ventures - a for-profit venture fund spunout from Omidyar Network in 2018 with Pierre Omidyar as its sole limited partner at the time.
In yet another twist of irony, Omidyar also founded the Intercept, which became famous for publishing the Snowden Files before making the surprising decision to halt research on the files and lock them down from any further public access in March of 2019.
Margot Williams, Henrik Moltke, Micah Lee, Ryan Gallagher
Given that history, one might think Omidyar would have some interesting thoughts about journalists being harassed and threatened in an attempt to uncover an anonymous source.
However, he has never made any public statements about the eBay scandal and mainstream media has apparently not seen fit to ask where the elusive billionaire founder was when everything went off the rails at the company which enabled him to amass the vast fortune he now spends on various political and economic "world-shaping" endeavours.
Omidyar also has tangential ties to the studio and team which produced a documentary about the scandal called Whatever It Takes, which debuted at the South by Southwest Film Festival last year and features exclusive interviews with the Steiners.
The film was produced by Allyson Luchak and Ben Travers, who had previously worked with the Steiners' original attorney in the civil case, Rosemary Scapicchio, on Trial 4, a documentary series about the fight to free Sean Ellis from wrongful conviction.
Whatever It Takes had backing from Concordia Studio, which is funded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, who has previously collaborated with Omidyar on various philanthropic and media endeavors.
In fact, Whatever It Takes executive producers Jonathan Silberberg and Nicole Stott from Concordia Studio both worked directly with Omidyar's Luminate Media in 2020 to produce A THOUSAND CUTS - a documentary about the CEO/Founder of news site Rappler, Maria Ressa, and press freedom in the Philippines.
Strangely, the Omidyar Network website removed all links and mentions of their financial involvement and support for Ressa and Rappler in July 2024.
Engaging with a production team that has ties to Omidyar-backed projects/ organizations could raise conflict of interest concerns for the film and seemed like an odd choice, given the traumatic experiences of the victims and ongoing litigation involved.
In an interesting bit of timing, the Steiners fired Scapicchio and retained new counsel around the same time as Whatever It Takes debuted, though it's not clear if the film was in any way related to that decision.
The scandal and subsequent ongoing brand damaging debacle should have been seen as an opportunity for eBay to chart a different course for how the company, under new Chief Communications Officer Gigi Ganatra Duff, will handle press relations going forward.
Unfortunately, a recent Crisis Comms job posting shows that eBay doesn't appear to have learned much from this situation, as they are actively seeking to hire someone with "a history of developing, pitching, preventing and securing high-impact media coverage" - a chilling thought considering what happened the last time eBay became concerned with preventing high-impact media coverage.
Liz Morton
While the public narrative around the eBay scandal has largely focused on the bizarre nature of the harassment campaign, painting a picture of a rogue security director going too far in some supposed quest to "protect the company", the criminal and civil cases have revealed a much deeper story of historic and continuing systemic corporate governance and compliance failures and a shockingly reckless disregard for free speech, press freedom, and the rule of law.
Shareholder rights firm Wolf Popper opened an investigation in 2020 to explore potential claims against members of eBay's Board of Directors related to this criminal conduct - including specifically calling Wenig's $57M exit package "outrageous considering his potential role in these activities."
Wolf Popper LLP
Wolf Popper and others ultimately did not move forward with action against the company or its officers at that time - but with all of the new information continuing to be revealed in the ongoing civil case, now would be an excellent time for investor rights firms and the DOJ to reopen their investigations.
