Jones Day Talks
JONES DAY TALKS®: The eBay Cyberstalking Case: Mitigating the Compliance Risks of Employee Misconduct
In mid-2019, a group of corporate employees based in Silicon Valley launched a months-long campaign of online harassment, threats of violence and physical surveillance targeting a middle-aged couple in Massachusetts who ran an online newsletter covering eCommerce. The employees worked for eBay, one of the largest, oldest Silicon Valley companies. The bizarre episode led to a high-profile federal prosecution of seven people in Boston federal court and a major civil suit against current and former eBay executives. Both matters are ongoing.
Jones Day's Andrew Lelling and Amy Harman Burkart, brought the federal criminal case against eBay, when Lelling was the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and Burkart the Chief of the Cybercrime Unit in that office. In this podcast, these veteran enforcement lawyers explain what companies must do to mitigate the corporate risks posed by employee misconduct, with a focus on management expectations, the importance of internal reporting and communications across teams, and the role executives must play in encouraging compliance through ethical behavior.