It wasn't exactly successful in silencing the victim but one of the car companies did this to Ralph Nader when he was investigating their products for Unsafe at Any Speed.

I'm honestly surprised that any company would still do this sort of thing to critics after how that turned out back in the 60s. When the harassment of Nader was discovered, it put extra momentum behind the push for car safety legislation that cost the car companies lots of money and saved countless lives. Nader was then able to get lots of additional consumer safety laws passed in the 70s. Maybe they just think themselves so powerful after decades of successfully buying politicians that they think they can now get away with this kind of thing.