Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by haunter | Hacker News Reader

Brian Gilbert, 56, of San Jose, Calif., former Senior Manager of Special Operations for eBay’s Global Security Team, was sentenced to time served, one year of supervised release with the special condition that he have no contact with either of the victims in the case and a $20,000 fine

Jim Baugh, 47, of San Jose, Calif., eBay’s former Senior Director of Safety and Security, was sentenced to 57 months in prison

David Harville, 50, of Las Vegas, Nev., former Director of Global Resiliency, was sentenced to 24 months in prison

Stephanie Popp, 34, of Louisville, Ky., former Senior Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to 12 months in prison

Philip Cooke, 56, of San Jose, Calif., a former Senior Manager of Security Operations, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and 12 months of home confinement

Stephanie Stockwell, 28, of Redwood City, Calif., a former Manager of Global Intelligence, was sentenced to one year in home confinement

Veronica Zea, 28, of San Jose, Calif., a contract intelligence analyst, was sentenced to one year in home confinement

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/final-defendant-ebay-cybe...

No consequences for executives, and yet their ostensibly enormous responsibility is how their salaries and benefits are always justified.

What I really don't understand is why the security people who sent to jail didn't drop their boss in it in return for diminishing their role

Cush consulting jobs after the fact. You don’t burn your social network unless the alternate is serious jail time. Given the slaps on the wrists described, clearly the after conviction pay day is more valuable.

> Cush consulting jobs after

Do you have evidence any of these folks got these?

Or generally, if any tech criminals now show nice consulting gigs on their LinkedIns and seem to have traction.

Wonder if any Enron perps are doing well, or Bernie Madoff’s associates, or if Elizabeth Holmes or SBF had righthand men…

This is well before most HN readers' time, but Michael Milken, the "Junk Bond King," was handed a $600,000,000 fine and a ten-year prison sentance for insider trading and racketeering. He was also barred from reëntering the securities industry. When he was released from prison after serving less than two years, he became a "consultant" charging a flat $25 million fee for his services, which avoided the ban on working in the securities industry.

Trump pardoned him in 2020. Consequences are incredibly elastic for people at the top of the food chain.

Oh lovely.

From his company’s Wiki page, one of the former employees:

> … later arrested after 1995 air rage incident

Other winners listed too but that’s the only guy who pooped on a plane.

These specific people? No. This happening in general? Yes - observed this first hand in the cybersecurity space.

There is a chance there wasn’t anything incriminating. The top guys kept conversations live or intimated they wanted something done; the lowers took the planning and execution upon themselves.

Mobsters have it down to an art.

"You take care of it." means "Murder him and dump the body into a building foundation."

"I don't see any problems." can mean "The ambush will happen at the scheduled time. Vinnie will clean up the bodies."

etc.

You'll also see a lot of politicians using "dog whistle" statements, that are interpreted by listeners to mean something entirely different from the stated words.

A good fictional example of this I often think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH5j9RHCBpM

Dealing with turbulence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

> Mobsters have it down to an art

Non-mobsters aren’t always as careful. There is a good chance these guys just weren’t properly investigated.

That's assuming they're wiretapped. For corporate comms, just remember that email is discoverable while video calls typically aren't even retained. Be as explicit as you want, especially if you can rope a lawyer into the call and claim it's privileged.

Would be interesting if automatic AI transcripts change this.

Only unintentionally. I know for some unnamed companies any calls containing executives, the Zoom AI transcripts cannot be enabled.

"Stand back and stand by."

I'm not a lawyer, but isn't RICO meant to give a way to prosecute those who are at the top of organizations that have people committing crimes like this?

Wasn't the strategy of Mafia bosses to say something vague like "I sure wish that guy would go away".

It was implicit that they wanted someone killed but if brought up in court they could say "I was just expressing an opinion, not giving an order"

If by mafia you mean English Crown sure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_tur...

https://youtu.be/c8TnSFyzLn4

Yup, i've worked long enough with senior mgmt to know that anything of interest for prosecution won't be written down, especially not on company devices. Those making the mistakes of writing things down are those actually prosecuted, the ranks and files.

> anything of interest for prosecution won't be written down, especially not on company devices

This vastly overestimates the opsec of most tech executives.

In my own experience, the brass sets the culture and expectations that encourage department heads to break the law. Certainly there are done CEOs explicitly commanding people to do crime, but it's more common to tell people to, eg, move fast, focus on profits, and do whatever needs to get done.

I was told to do something that was a crime by my line level manager at a tech company when I was only a few years in my career, with code that he hand wrote and wanted me to type in and commit under my name.

When I refused he called me into a 1:1 and verbally told me I would be losing my job if I didn’t and only backed off when I told him he was never getting that paper back and asked if he wanted to go HR right now at which point I would be going to legal and didn’t care if I lost my job as long as he was implicated.

Only time in my career it’s happened, but it happens.

That's a terrible situation, especially for someone early in their career. Glad you stood your ground and had some hard evidence to back you up.

It's standard policy at most major corporations even for low-level employees to not discuss anything legally sensitive over company e-mail or chat.

You vastly underestimate how much they take care of things. At the top people manage liability.

Shady SR mgmt pro tips:

1) phones. In California, you get a lot of protection just calling the guy. Use this. Only call people in California.

2) never lie on an email (regarding money, asking for services, providing services)

3) never lie on a phone (regarding money, asking for services, providing services)

4) lying in person is fine

5) anything that MUST be written down must be deleted after read and have no trace back. (privnote etc)

6) all email services should be hosted overseas (protonmail etc)

You cannot be giving opsec tips and then suggesting using some arbitrary 3rd part service (privnote) as something that leaves no trace.

For all we know it is a honeypot. For all we know, everything is a honeypot.

That's why the burden of proof needs to shift and our thinking about responsibility needs to shift. Your liability should increase in parallel with the benefits you derive from your position. If you are getting rich from running ebay then you will lose that wealth when something like this happens; it doesn't matter whether you directed it or even knew about it; you don't get to get rich if bad things happen while you are in charge.

If anyone in leadership asks me to do anything that I find personally concerning, I'll write an email asking them to confirm that's what they want me to do.

But it's mind-boggling that any subordinate couldn't understand that such levels of depravity and insanity could land them in legal trouble, and that's besides the ethical issue.

I think they fully understood, which is why they all got jail sentences.

“Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Those are some very Senior lowers

Possibly because they hope for gainful employment in future, and being a whistleblower of any variety tends to massively reduce the chances of that.

No they just loudly say “It would be a shame if an unfortunate accident should occur to these bloggers”

If executives were at any risk of facing repercussions for their negligence, greed or outright villainy, I suspect fewer people would aspire to become one or remain one for very long.

Right, because their responsibility is for increasing shareholder value, not falling on a sword when there's a PR snafu.

> eBay entered into a deferred prosecution agreement and admitted to a detailed recitation of all the relevant facts about its conduct and agreed to pay a criminal penalty of $3 million, which is the statutory maximum fine for these six felony offenses.

Scaled from eBay's $11.1B/y to a person making $70k/y, that's proportional to a $18.92 fine.

"The statutory maximum for these six felony offenses."

I think it should be scaled to the salary of 6 people. So about $3.15

When will the executives face criminal trial too?

“ The seven members of eBay’s security team were all criminally charged and sentenced to prison, home confinement or time served.

Other executives went on to other corporate jobs. Wymer and Wenig left eBay in September 2019, before the charges were filed. The following year, Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.

The Steiners sued the trio and other former executives along with the company in the case that led to the $56mn payout. Under the terms of the settlement, Wenig agreed to pay $2mn, Jones must contribute $500,000 and Wymer $50,000, according to the pair’s lawyers.”

Do we know what AI startup? I think its important for people to know when they do business with that startup.

https://symbolic.ai/team

“The first AI platform created for professional journalists, communicators, and publishers.”

It’s quite ironic that he went on to cater to communicators after harassing bloggers.

Dream a little dream of the world you want, then be prepared for the alarm to go off to rejoin the real world. An insignificant number of people care and while everyone else does business with anyone as long as there's benefit for them. As exhibit A, I present all of history

> As exhibit A, I present all of history

History shows tiny effort pays off massively. To the extent you have a point, it’s in people creating elaborate excuses for lazy nihilism across time.

I wonder if Captain Boycott would agree.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boycott

Many of the worst offenders have survived boycotts because people don't care enough to change habits. They may vocally state their support of a boycott, yet continue to use the services of the boycott target. (It's easy to change your avatar on the socials as a virtue signal, but it takes effort to actually follow through.) Walmart, Amazon, etc have all survived boycotts but they have not been hurt nor changed their ways. The number of people that have permanently boycotted these places are insignificant. For example, personally, I no longer have a Prime account and do not shop at Walmart. Neither company notice. Even if all of the readers of HN stopped using either service, neither would be affected in a significant way even if they did notice.

And on the other hand, let's see how the C-suite made out:

  Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley. Wenig has been on General Motors’ board since 2018 and now runs an AI start-up. Jones remained at eBay until 2020 and now sits on Prudential Financial’s board.

(These were the Chief Communication Officer, CEO, and SVP for Global Operations, respectively)

> Wymer was appointed chief of the non-profit Boys and Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley

Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley lists its corporate donors as including Alliance Roofing · Amgen Foundation · Applied Materials · ASML · Comcast · Deloitte · EY · First Tech Federal Credit Union · Fremont Bank Foundation · Groundworks · Microsoft · NetApp · Peninsula Building Materials (PBM) · Project Learn / Panda Cares · Rite Aid Healthy Futures. If you work at or with any of these, flag this reporting to them.

The organization also appears to work with the City of San Jose and the Morgan Hill school district. (An abusive alleged excon running a kids’ charity is absurd to the point of being hilarious. Whoever was supposed to vet him for hiring should also find a new calling.)

I adore our local boys and girls club, our kids are there every weekday and they adore it too. We have donated a little bit of money monthly for almost a decade. I do not love the big money vanity donors but they are what make the place tick.

This is another level… I would be so angry if this clown were running our metro area. I feel obligated to write letters to all of those donors even though we are on the other coast.

> our kids are there every weekday and they adore it too. We have donated a little bit of money monthly for almost a decade

Write to the national organization. Like, this guy is credibly accused of—and has settled claims around—seriously abusive behavior. He should not be around kids.

Simple, one page: I am a donor and a parent who trusts their kids to your organization. I saw this reporting and was shocked.

It may honestly not be on their radars.

> Whoever was supposed to vet him for hiring should also find a new calling.

I don't think people at that level are really "vetted," these days[0].

[0] https://arstechnica.com/health/2026/07/on-the-run-for-20-yea...

Make 'em famous

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