James Baugh, Cyberstalking, Massachusetts 2020

BOSTON, MA – A former eBay, Inc. executive pleaded guilty today to his role in a cyberstalking campaign targeting the editor and publisher of a newsletter that eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.

James Baugh, 47, of San Jose, Calif., eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety & Security, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit stalking through interstate travel and through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts of stalking through interstate travel, two counts of stalking through facilities of interstate commerce, two counts of witness tampering, and two counts of destruction, alteration, and falsification of records in a federal investigation. U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saris scheduled sentencing for September 29, 2022.

According to court documents, between approximately August 5, 2019, and August 23, 2020, Baugh and his co-conspirators at eBay agreed to engage in a harassment campaign targeting a husband and wife in Natick, Mass., for their roles in publishing a newsletter that reported on issues of interest to eBay sellers. Senior executives at eBay were frustrated with the newsletter’s tone and content, and with the tone and content of comments posted beneath the newsletter’s articles.

The harassment campaign arose from communications between those executives and Baugh, who was eBay’s senior security employee. Baugh and his co-conspirators allegedly executed a three-part harassment campaign intended to intimidate the victims and to change the content of the newsletter’s reporting.

The campaign included sending anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content and threatening to visit the victims in Natick, and traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and install a GPS tracking device on their car.

The deliveries ordered to the victims’ home included a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath, and live insects. The harassment also featured Craigslist posts inviting the public for sexual encounters at the victims’ home.

On August 15, 2019, Baugh and co-conspirators allegedly traveled from California to Natick to surveil the victims and to install a GPS tracking device on the victims’ car. The victims spotted the surveillance team and contacted local police. After learning of the police’s investigation, Baugh made false statements to police and internal investigators, deleted digital evidence related to the cyberstalking campaign, and falsified records intended to throw the police off the trail.

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