It's not mailed to you, it's mailed to your neighbors in your name (presumably so they'll ask you awkward questions when returning it). It does seem a little old-fashioned as an intimidation method, though.

Amateurs

By perruptor on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 5:01pm.

They got their ideas from a movie. I'd say they lack imagination, but they clearly imagined that they knew what they were doing, and that the police did not. Delusions of adequacy.

Awkward questions

By Will LaTulippe on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 5:08pm.

"Well, neighbor, sometimes a man likes a woman very much..."

Future employees of the Trump

By PeterGriffith5 on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 3:38pm.

Future employees of the Trump organization.

This is absolutely amazing

By BostonDog on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:27pm.

Wow. Thanks Adam for such a detailed story. So. Many. Questions.

It's not uncommon for huge corporations to fuck people over but normally they aren't so specific and graphic. Why is this not front page news on the Washington Post? Seriously, why is Uhub "breaking" this story? (No offense to Uhub, but this isn't exactly a regional story.)

Hats off to the Natick PD. The police in general take a lot of well-deserved heat but that man earned his pay.

Why are the other executives who knew about this not being charged?

On Aug. 10, the couple got an Amazon.com package containing a bloody pig-face mask.

This is a thing Amazon sells? (Edit: This is a halloween gag apparently.)

Looks like eBay put out their own press release with this gem:

eBay apologizes to the affected individuals and is sorry that they were subjected to this.

Thanks, and no offense taken

By adamg on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:04pm.

It was announced by the US Attorney in Boston, so the Globe and WBZ got it early (others, too, I'm sure, but they're the only ones I know for sure), which is typical even for a national story. But it's filtering out beyond 128 now - see the Washington Post and CNBC.

And to be honest, I first heard about this on WBZ - if you can imagine, I'm not on the US Attorney's must-call press list (or call for any reason list, for that matter).

Fortunately, once I had the names of the two main alleged conspirators, I could get a copy of the affidavit, which is where the whole story (at least from the government's perspective) plays out, because the federal judiciary has an excellent (if expensive) document system, unlike certain state courts I could mention, which force you to go down to a courthouse just to look up a docket, except you can't because all the courthouses are closed now, harrumph.

Washington Post Article

By BostonDog on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:42pm.

The Post's article notes that one of the people charged is:

Brian Gilbert, who is a former Santa Clara police captain

But I'm sure he was a great cop.

This is probably too new to

By anon on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 1:05am.

This is probably too new to be there, but check out RECAP if you aren't familiar about it; it's a free alternative to PACER. Meanwhile, people are trying to get PACER opened up for free, but it's not easy.

Recap is great

By adamg on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 10:34pm.

I've had it installed for years, but it only gets you stuff for free if another user downloads the document you want first.

As for bloody pig masks ...

By adamg on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:15pm.

You even have your choice (don't click on that link if you don't want to see people wearing bloody pig masks).

Also, as long as we're talking about commerce, I knew immediately which pizza place they called to get a pizza delivered in the middle of the night, since, of course, there is only one (I recently wrote about the company it shares a building with in Mattapan).

Here's the part I don't

By anon on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 12:29am.

Here's the part I don't understand: How do you order a $70 pizza without having to give a credit card in advance?

Corporations and Organized Crime

By SwirlyGrrl on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:17pm.

Together again.

Did they ever part ways?

By ECG (nli) on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:51pm.

n/t

Sounds like a cross

By mg on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:30pm.

Between a Godfather movie and Mel Brooks.

I was thinking Coen Bros

By fungwah on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:34pm.

All we need is one of these guys to try and kill the other and chop up the corpse to get our very own local Fargo. We can even replace Minnesotan accents with Boston accents!

I finally got fed up with eBay and cancelled my account

By roadman on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 4:40pm.

about a year and a half ago. This makes me doubly glad I did.

I still use it

By perruptor on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 5:19pm.

But my recent experiences have me getting fed up, too. I keep having to return things that don't work or are not as described, and orders get cancelled for unknown reasons.

I used to both buy and sell

By roadman on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 8:59pm.

eBay has been making a concerted effort over the past several years to squeeze out the truly amateur sellers in favor of businesses. Towards that end, they've continually raised fees and have changed and added rules regarding everything from shipping fees a seller can charge to mandating maximum delivery times.

Further, if a customer files a claim against a seller (and I've had personal experience with this due to unforeseen circumstances that delayed a shipment), their attitude is basically "well, why would the customer be lying?".

Yep, I don't miss eBay one bit.

I've heard some other pretty awful stuff about eBay, as well.

By mplo on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 9:48am.

At least a couple of people (my brother-in-law included) attempted to sell stuff on eBay, and never got paid by who they sold their merchandise to.

What a nightmare...

By R Hicks Jr on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 5:17pm.

Imagine being the target of such a campaign, just because someone didn't like what you wrote in your e-commerce-consumer-report website. Even more remarkable because it's behavior by employees of a major publicly traded corporation, not some mob-operated front. Baugh and Harville come off as two low-life corporate thugs. By the time the investigation is complete, I wonder how many others at eBay will be implicated. I hope the editors at eCommerceBytes emerge with some recompense for the wear and tear on their nerves, much less any monetary losses they may have suffered. This is such a crazy chain of events, it seems like a paranoid conspiracy screenplay fit for a based-on-a-true story upcoming movie.

So many questions, but I'll start with this one

By Gary C on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 6:13pm.

What the heck did the Natick couples' website say about eBay?

More to the point

By Kaz on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 9:18pm.

How much clout has that site got?

They must be the owners of Consumer Reports crossed with the JD Powers awards or something!

phrasing!

By Refugee on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 2:44pm.

Amazon.com package containing a bloody pig-face mask

Was it a bloody-pig face mask? A bloody pig-face-mask would be next level horrifying, not to mention unkosher.

But let's not ignore the most tragic part of this tale, which is employees of eBay using Amazon to purchase such crap.

Yeah, was it actual blood, or

By anon on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 12:35pm.

Yeah, was it actual blood, or an image of blood?

It's a rubbery mask ..

By adamg on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 10:36pm.

With red paint or dye made to look like blood.

The ex-CEO lost about $18M a year in total compensation, but

By MC Slim JB on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 6:19pm.

still walked away with about a $6.5M payout to go away quietly. Not bad for inept criminality.

Only $6.5 million?

By erik g on Mon, 06/15/2020 - 8:12pm.

I'm actually surprised the number is that low. A CEO pulling that kind of scratch would usually command $50+ million to disappear quietly, even after pulling this kind of nonsense.

The moral of the story, kids, is that once you make it to the upper echelons of grifting venture capitalists, you can run the business into the ground while sending your private security team to make death threats to an e-commerce review site on the other side of the country, and still walk away with fuck-you money and never face charges.

Like clockwork, each new morning is an adventure in absolute absurdity.

Who needs legal weed when every day feels more and more like a Sally Cruikshank cartoon?

https://youtu.be/E4unyZNh84M

Truth is

By Anon on Tue, 06/16/2020 - 11:42am.

Stranger than fiction. Holy crap. This needs to become a movie

Feds allege eBay terror campaign against Natick publishers of articles the company didn't like

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