A former eBay Inc. employee was sentenced Tuesday to at least one year behind bars for her function in a harassment scheme focusing on creators of an internet e-newsletter that included the supply of dwell spiders, a bloody pig masks and different disturbing objects to their house.
Stephanie Popp, 34, of Louisville, Kentucky, who was eBay’s senior supervisor of world intelligence, was sentenced to prison in Boston federal courtroom after pleading responsible to cyberstalking conspiracy and witness tampering conspiracy expenses.
Stephanie Stockwell, 28, of Redwood City, California, former supervisor of eBay’s Global Intelligence Center, was additionally sentenced on Tuesday for her function in the scheme, however averted prison time. She was ordered to serve two years of probation, with the primary year in house confinement.
They are amongst seven former eBay staff who’ve pleaded responsible in the scheme focusing on a (*1*) couple — David and Ina Steiner — who angered eBay executives with protection of the corporate in their e-newsletter, eCommerceBytes.
Stockwell and Popp reported to James Baugh, the previous senior director of security and safety, who authorities say was the chief of the scheme.
Baugh was sentenced final month to virtually 5 years behind bars. Another eBay government who pleaded responsible in the case, David Harville, was sentenced to 2 years in prison.
Authorities say eBay staff — at Baugh’s course — despatched nameless harassing and generally threatening Twitter messages criticizing the e-newsletter’s protection of eBay. The couple then began getting disturbing deliveries at their house, together with dwell bugs and a funeral wreath.
At one level, Baugh recruited Harville to go together with him to (*1*) to spy on the couple, authorities say. They went to the couple’s house in the hopes of putting in a GPS tracker on their automobile however the storage was locked, so Harville purchased instruments with a plan to interrupt into it, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors known as Popp one of many “most culpable members” in the scheme. She was concerned in all points of the harassment marketing campaign and “knew each its full extent and the impact that it was having on its `rattled’ victims,” prosecutors wrote in courtroom paperwork.
Prosecutors didn’t search prison time for Stockwell, describing her as among the many least culpable. While she was concerned in the planning and sending of the packages, she had no half in the nameless Twitter messages, prosecutors stated.
Stockwell’s lawyer stated in courtroom papers that Baugh manipulated, “terrorized and intimidated” her and others he supervised. Stockwell’s lawyer stated all her actions had been undertaken “on the course of, or manipulation by, Baugh,” however she has “by no means wavered in her heartfelt regret for having participated in this ludicrous scheme.”
“The seeds of the tragedy that unfolded at eBay inflicting havoc, heartache, and worry” for the victims “disseminated from Baugh’s weird, unorthodox and admittedly, inappropriate and harmful work surroundings,” Stockwell’s lawyer wrote.
Popp’s lawyer declined to touch upon Tuesday. An e-mail looking for remark was despatched to a lawyer for Stockwell.