eBay's Criminal Stalking Campaign Against a Journalist Was Run by Ex-Cops. They Nearly Got Away With It.

There Are No Girls on the Internet

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Technology

4.1 • 905 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is part 1 of a 2-part arc about one of wildest tech stories I've seen in a long time. For over two decades, a husband and wife duo have been publishing EcommerceBytes, a respected trade publication for eBay sellers. But in 2019, someone started harassing them. It began with a spray painted fence, then quickly escalated to death threats and fetal pigs and a mysterious van outside their house. Eventually, they discovered that eBay's own security team was behind it all, with the campaign put into motion by then-CEO Devin Wenig. This bizarre and frightening story is a cautionary tale about the rise of private armies. It starts in San Francisco, takes us to the small community of Natick, Massachusetts, and ultimately takes TANGOTI listeners right back to Madison Square Garden. Buckle up.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:02.6	Guaranteed Human.
0:08.1	There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.
0:16.3	I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
0:21.9	So people will sometimes ask me, like, what is the wildest tech story that you've ever talked about on the podcast?
0:29.2	And without fail, it is the eBay harassment story.
0:33.2	Because I think it shows the lengths to which some tech leaders will go not just to make money or have their company succeed or have their company make money or to have them make money personally, but how far they will go to enact personal vengeance.
0:49.7	And I think it makes clear that an increasing amount of the scaffolding that our tech landscape is built on is actually built up around things like vengeance and personal animosities.
1:03.1	So, Mike, come along with me on the eBay harassment story.
1:08.7	Before we get started, is this a story that you remember?
1:12.3	This is a story that I very vaguely remember, like, just like seeing a headline about it or
1:20.0	something. But I had no idea how wild of a story it was until looking over these notes that you put together.
1:29.6	I don't understand how this was not like a much bigger story with like a fictionalized movie and a documentary about it.
1:41.3	Well, it does have a documentary, but it reads, like the story, it's so cinematic.
1:49.0	If I didn't know it really happened, I would think it was fictional because it reads like
1:53.6	something from a movie. So let's get into it. Our story starts with a couple in Natick, Massachusetts,
2:00.6	which is a kind of a quiet, sleepy suburb of Boston.
2:05.3	I know Natick well. When I went to college at Northeastern, it was just, you know, out the commuter rail a couple of stops.
2:13.6	So Ina and David Steiner have lived in Natick for decades.
2:18.8	They've been married for 30 years.
2:28.5	They work from home together, which I guess depending on the vibe of your relationship and how your home is built, could either be the dream or a nightmare.
2:38.7	But for them, for the Steiner's, they make it work because they've built something together as pioneers of the early internet.
	...

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