A former security operations supervisor for eBay Inc.'s Europe and Asia offices has pleaded guilty to cyberstalking that included shipping live spiders and other packages to a Massachusetts couple who posted an online newsletter that criticized the online auction site.
Based on the statement of federal prosecutors in Boston, Philip Cooke of San Jose, California, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and tampering with witnesses. He is set for sentencing Feb. 24. If found guilty, Cooke faces a maximum of five years' prison for each charge.
His legal counsel refused to issue any comment when reached by The Associated Press. The 55-year old Cooke, a former police captain with the Santa Clara Police Department, is the fifth former eBay worker out of seven who have been charged in the case to plead guilty.
The others who pleaded guilty include one-time eBay security executives James Baugh and David Harville, who state prosecutors said targeted the Steiner's in Natick with threatening messages and deliveries like funeral wreaths and a box of live cockroaches.
According to prosecutors, the harassment campaign that targeted the Natick couple started in August last year and included three distinct parts: deliveries of a package containing a preserved fetal pig and a book on surviving the loss of a spouse, private Twitter messages and public tweets that were critical of the newsletter's content and threats to visit the victims; and surveillance.
After the bloody pig mask was shipped, Ina Steiner received a message on Twitter that said: 'DO I HAVE UR ATTENTION NOW????," the Daily Mail quoted the message as saying in court documents.
Prosecutors said the defendants sent pornographic material under the couple's name to neighbors and conducted covert surveillance in an attempt to terrorize them and discourage them from criticizing eBay.
