NATICK, MASS. (WHDH) - A former California police captain working for eBay is the seventh person to be charged in a massive cyberstalking campaign — that involved mailing porn, live cockroaches and a pig mask — allegedly launched by executives at the company against a Natick couple, federal officials said.
In June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office charged six executives with harassing and stalking the couple, who ran a newsletter and blog that was critical of eBay. On Tuesday, the office charged Philip Cooke, 55, of San Jose, Calif., with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses.
Cooke, a former police captain in Santa Clara, Calif., and a supervisor of security operations at eBay’s European and Asian offices, is being charged along with James Baugh, David Harville, Stephanie Popp, Brian Gilbert, Stephanie Stockwell, and Veronica Zea, all of whom were officers, employers, or contractors of eBay.
Officials say the cyberstalking campaign began in August, 2019, when executives began mailing items like spiders and fetal pigs to the home. Some of the executives later threatened to visit the couple and planned to publish information like their home address online, federal officials said.
According to federal documents, the executives then planned to have Gilbert, the former police chief, approach the couple with an offer to stop that harassment as a way to get favorable coverage of eBay and identify anonymous commenters critical of the company.
Executives later spied on the couple and lied to police investigating the surveillance, federal officials said.
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