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'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

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Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #39
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.

Mobsters have it down to an art. "You take care of it." means "Murder him and dump the body into a building foundation." "I don't see any problems." can mean "The ambush will happen at the scheduled time. Vinnie will clean up the bodies." etc. You'll also see a lot of politicians using "dog whistle" statements, that are interpreted by listeners to mean something entirely different from the stated words.

> Mobsters have it down to an art

Non-mobsters aren’t always as careful. There is a good chance these guys just weren’t properly investigated.

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#62

Post by siva7 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26
jimnotgym wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I really don't understand is why the security people who sent to jail didn't drop their boss in it in return for diminishing their role

There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.

Yup, i've worked long enough with senior mgmt to know that anything of interest for prosecution won't be written down, especially not on company devices. Those making the mistakes of writing things down are those actually prosecuted, the ranks and files.

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#63

Post by ninjagoo »

alexpotato wrote: post #44

Scott Adams [0], who recently passed away, had a great line on human behavior (paraphrased): Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly. For another example, the Google case where it was exposed how many nefarious activities they were up to around auction…

> Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly.

Do you have any evidence to support your claim?

On the contrary, a 2019 analysis [1] combined 400+ experimental treatments, 44,000+ participants, and 47 countries. Participants surrendered roughly three-quarters of the money they could have obtained through maximal lying. In repeated experiments, fewer than one participant in twenty consistently claimed the payoff-maximizing outcome. Increasing the potential reward from a few cents to approximately $50 did not cause people to approach maximal dishonesty.

In a field experiment [2] with 17,000+ apparently lost wallets in 355 cities across 40 countries, people were generally more likely to report wallets containing money than wallets containing no money. The effect appeared in 38 of the 40 countries. The researchers’ follow-up evidence pointed to concern for the owner and an increased aversion to thinking of oneself as a thief when more money was involved.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.3982/ECTA14673

[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax5034

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#65

Post by Zigurd »

12_throw_away wrote: post #18
evan_ wrote: post #5

I assume this has been investigated but it's difficult to believe this stopped at one pair of critics. There are plenty of people online critical of eBay. Were they running similar campaigns on anyone else? > Seven members of eBay’s security team, including former police captains, “worked together to harass and intimidate the Steiners”, according to prosecutors. I hope someone's looking into the careers of the "forme…

From the facts that came out at his trial [1], it seems like Baugh, the guy who ran the operation, was basically feral. At one point during his cross-country trip to harass these people , he was also trying to organize a blackmail campaign (with eBay personnel and resources) against a prosecutor in Arkansas who was charging his father with something? [2] [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18602070/united-states…

Corporate security is the most sought after gig for cops. It attracts the best of the best. Certainly the most ambitious.

If someone were to ever dump the texts and emails of a major city PD, it would open a lot of eyes.

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#66

Post by nixon_why69 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #39
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.

Mobsters have it down to an art. "You take care of it." means "Murder him and dump the body into a building foundation." "I don't see any problems." can mean "The ambush will happen at the scheduled time. Vinnie will clean up the bodies." etc. You'll also see a lot of politicians using "dog whistle" statements, that are interpreted by listeners to mean something entirely different from the stated words.

That's assuming they're wiretapped. For corporate comms, just remember that email is discoverable while video calls typically aren't even retained. Be as explicit as you want, especially if you can rope a lawyer into the call and claim it's privileged.

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#67

Post by dylan604 »

polytely wrote: post #41
robotswantdata wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will the executives face criminal trial too? “ The seven members of eBay’s security team were all criminally charged and sentenced to prison, home confinement or time served. Other executives went on to other corporate jobs. Wymer and Wenig left eBay in September 2019, before the charges were filed. The following year, Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has…

Do we know what AI startup? I think its important for people to know when they do business with that startup.

Dream a little dream of the world you want, then be prepared for the alarm to go off to rejoin the real world. An insignificant number of people care and while everyone else does business with anyone as long as there's benefit for them. As exhibit A, I present all of history

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#68

Post by samirillian »

happytoexplain wrote: post #8
haunter wrote: post #3

Brian Gilbert, 56, of San Jose, Calif., former Senior Manager of Special Operations for eBay’s Global Security Team, was sentenced to time served, one year of supervised release with the special condition that he have no contact with either of the victims in the case and a $20,000 fine Jim Baugh, 47, of San Jose, Calif., eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, was sentenced to 57 months in prison David…

No consequences for executives, and yet their ostensibly enormous responsibility is how their salaries and benefits are always justified.

No they just loudly say “It would be a shame if an unfortunate accident should occur to these bloggers”

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#69

Post by ninjagoo »

energy123 wrote: post #55
alexpotato wrote: post #44

Scott Adams [0], who recently passed away, had a great line on human behavior (paraphrased): Whenever people are unsupervised and there is a chance for fraud or bad behavior and, due to the lack of supervision, they believe they won't be caught, you should ALWAYS assume that people will behave badly. For another example, the Google case where it was exposed how many nefarious activities they were up to around auction…

In one of my college courses, 100% of my fellow students cheated, including me. This is when I learned that virtually every person is deep down a liar and a cheat if they think they won't face consequences and it's in their benefit, and any public facade of virtue that people put up, common in this industry, is a manipulation strategy that is just more cheating, although of a different kind.

> This is when I learned that virtually every person is deep down a liar and a cheat if they think they won't face consequences

I would argue that the opposite is true, that people are more likely to lie or cheat to avoid consequences, especially significant consequences.

This is why, the aviation industry that has made commercial flying safer than other transportation modes, grants immunity for reporting incidents [1].

[1] https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/overview/immunity.html

Re: 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout

#70

Post by hn773746483 »

I imagine this kind of behavior is common everywhere, and the bodies responsible for enforcing things (examples: data protection, consumer protection) just go "hmmmm sorry we're understaffed", "we don't take action on everything" or just refuse to investigate internally because nobody would EVER blatantly break the law :^).
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