Stephanie Popp, Cyberstalking, Massachusetts 2022

BOSTON – In a shocking case of corporate cyberstalking, two former eBay employees have been sentenced for their roles in a harassment campaign targeting the editor and publisher of a newsletter that eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.

Stephanie Popp, 34, of Louisville, Ky., eBay’s former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison and two years of probation. Stephanie Stockwell, 28, of Redwood City, Calif., the former manager of eBay’s Global Intelligence Center, was sentenced to two years of probation, with one year to be served in home confinement.

The cyberstalking campaign, which took place between approximately Aug. 5, 2019 and Sept. 6, 2019, targeted 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 as well as the substance of comments posted beneath the newsletter’s articles.

As part of the harassment campaign, the defendants and their co-conspirators executed a three-part plan to intimidate the victims and to influence their reporting about eBay. The campaign included sending anonymous and disturbing deliveries to the victims’ home, sending private Twitter messages and public tweets criticizing the newsletter’s content, threats to visit the victims in Natick, and traveling to Natick to surveil the victims and installing a GPS tracking device on their car.

Stockwell, at the direction of co-conspirator James Baugh, purchased a laptop for use in harassing the victims, and used an anonymous email account to order online live spiders and a prepaid debit card to purchase a late-night pizza delivery to the victims’ home. Other deliveries ordered to the victims’ home included a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig and a funeral wreath.

Popp sent private Twitter messages and public tweets, drafted or approved by Baugh, Gilbert, or Cooke, criticizing the newsletter’s content. The threatening Twitter messages were written as if they had been sent by eBay sellers who were unhappy with the victims’ coverage in the newsletter. Some of these messages posted the victims’ home address and threats to show up at their home.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth B. Kosto, Deputy Chief of Rollins’ Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit, and involved valuable assistance and cooperation with the investigation from eBay. eBay executives’ frustration with the newsletter’s tone and content led to the cyberstalking campaign, which was carried out by former employees and eBay security employees.

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