Jaw-dropping documentary Whatever It Takes details an aggressive stalking campaign targeted towards a couple whose reporting criticized the tech company<\/p>\n
When Massachusetts husband-and-wife team Ina and David Steiner launched their reporting careers covering Silicon Valley at the turn of the century, the tech beat was still cozy enough to feel personal. The startups were still emerging from garages, and the journalists covering them were often filing stories from their own kitchen tables. Ebay was still a young online auction company founded on the principle that \u201cpeople are basically good.\u201d<\/p>\n
As digital retail took off, the Steiners launched an e-zine called EcommerceBytes, catering to a growing community of small business owners who were increasingly using platforms like eBay to sell their wares. \u201cWe talked about this being an opportunity for just average people, disabled people, elderly people to make extra income,\u201d says David of a community that has grown alongside EcommerceBytes, which now has more than 600,000 readers. \u201cWe were really excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their first 19 years on the beat were a dream, the kind of happily-ever-after usually reserved for Hallmark Christmas movie couples. But like any successful partnership, it depended on a division of labor. Ina handled what got published, and David handled how it got done. \u201cBack when we started there was no WordPress,\u201d Ina says. \u201cHe had to somehow conjure up his own system where we could still publish within budget.\u201d<\/p>\n
But they never expected the dream to turn into a nightmare, with them as the targets of a relentless cross-country harassment campaign orchestrated by the very company behind their livelihood. \u201cThis was a Stephen King nightmare, a horrible nightmare,\u201d Ina says. \u201cAnd then to find out the company that I had covered for 20 years was doing this is surreal. It\u2019s taken an enormous toll on us physically and mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Steiners have become a startling example of the modern dangers reporters can face simply for doing their jobs. Last month, the Steiners obtained a $55.7m settlement from eBay after six years of criminal and civil proceedings against the company in connection with its former employees\u2019 efforts to intimidate the couple into silence. The macabre campaign unfolded over several weeks in 2019, with the Steiners receiving online threats and disturbing deliveries at their suburban Boston home: live spiders, a bloody pig mask modeled after the one worn by the killer in the Saw franchise, a book on surviving the death of a spouse. Pornographic magazines addressed to David were deliberately sent to the Steiners\u2019 neighbors, and their home was listed online as a destination for pop-up yard sales and swingers\u2019 parties.<\/p>\n
The Steiners had scant idea who was behind the threats or what they had done to deserve them. \u201cI thought it was some lone psychopath,\u201d Ina said. \u201cI reached out to my sister and said: \u2018I have a stalker. Please tell everyone to disengage and disconnect from me on social media.\u2019 We were so terrified and afraid for our family. I was feeling this sort of shame.\u201d<\/p>\n
They went into self-preservation mode, jury-rigging noisemakers from pots and pans to alert them of potential home intruders, installing cameras throughout their house and sleeping in separate beds to ensure one had enough time to call for help if the other was attacked. All the while, local police were left dumbfounded by the case. They didn\u2019t really start figuring it out until the Steiners provided a license plate number from a car that had been monitoring them, which they traced back to an eBay employee who had rented the vehicle with a corporate credit card.<\/p>\n
From there, the mystery quickly unraveled: eBay was under pressure \u2013 struggling to keep pace with competitors, facing activist investors and embarrassed by Ina\u2019s matter-of-fact reporting on then CEO Devin Wenig\u2019s bloated compensation package. Text message exchanges between executives suggested how far they were willing to go to make the Steiners go away, and just how personal the vendetta had apparently become \u2013 a far cry from the cozy Silicon Valley of yesteryear:<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to see ashes,\u201d wrote chief communications officer Steve Wymer. \u201cAs long as it takes. Whatever it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to investigators, the company\u2019s security chief, James Baugh, acting on orders from on high, then directed a group of young women who worked for him to target the Steiners \u2013 even as he was also harassing them and, in one case, was extramaritally involved. In 2020, the Department of Justice charged seven eBay executives and employees with cyberstalking. In 2022, Baugh was sentenced to 57 months in prison. In 2024, federal prosecutors entered into a deferred-prosecution agreement with eBay itself. The company admitted to a detailed statement of facts, was charged with six felony counts (including interstate-travel and electronic-communications stalking) and agreed to pay the maximum $3m criminal penalty.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Steiners\u2019 $55.7m civil settlement \u2013 in which eBay admitted fault and apologized but disclaimed legal liability \u2013 brought a nearly two-year legal battle to a close. Wenig, who stepped down as eBay\u2019s CEO in 2019, agreed to pay $2m to the Steiners and $1m to a first amendment rights charity in Ina\u2019s name. But the formal resolutions haven\u2019t exactly brought an end to the Steiners\u2019 personal and professional nightmare. Since their 2019 ordeal, they\u2019ve each been diagnosed with PTSD, see therapists and take medication to manage anxiety. A simple grocery run still feels like a fraught proposition after all the stalking. David is still haunted by the memory of celebrating his 31st wedding anniversary with Ina over a tuna and dry spaghetti, as their provisions ran dry. \u201cEvery time we went out or I tried to shop, something would happen and I\u2019d have to run home,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The Prime Video documentary Whatever It Takes, directed by Jenny Carchman, retraces the Steiners\u2019 ordeal with the pace of a paperback thriller \u2013 among other things, revealing an eBay corporate security operation that scans like a cross between an NSA counter-terrorism strike force and a frat house. The couple was vehemently against the idea of participating at first. But the documentary has helped their friends and neighbors understand the gravity of their situation, and why they were so cagey about accepting help. \u201cWe felt toxic,\u201d David says. \u201cWe certainly didn\u2019t want anybody else involved in something that was directed at us \u2013 so we just stayed in our bunker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Somehow, though, the Steiners managed to summon the resolve to continue publishing \u2013 partly to keep the scandal from swallowing the brand they built from scratch. \u201cWhen people were writing about eBay targeting us, it was as if my 20 years of being a reporter didn\u2019t exist,\u201d Ina says. \u201cI was reduced to: that lady who wrote the story about executive compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given their own experience of being targeted, I wondered if they could empathize with the female employees who also found themselves caught up in the scandal.<\/p>\n