BOSTON — A former eBay Inc. executive was sentenced on Thursday to almost five years in prison for leading a scheme to terrorize the creators of an online newsletter that included sending live spiders, cockroaches, a funeral wreath and other disturbing deliveries to their home.

David Steiner, who along with his wife was the target of the harassment campaign, told the court that eBay former Senior Director of Safety and Security James Baugh and other eBay employees made their lives “a living hell.” He expressed fear that other companies would use it as a blueprint to go after journalists in the future.

“This was a bizarre, premeditated assault on our lives … with buy-in at the highest levels of eBay,” Steiner told the judge.

Another former eBay executive, David Harville, was sentenced later Thursday to two years behind bars for his role in the scheme targeting David and Ina Steiner, the publisher and reporter who angered executives with coverage of the company in their newsletter, eCommerceBytes.

Baugh and Harville, eBay’s onetime director of global resiliency, are among seven former employees who have pleaded guilty to charges in the case.

Court records in the case show how the top eBay executives became enraged by the Steiners’ newsletter and readers who posted comments criticizing the company on their site, which eBay viewed as a threat to its business.

The scheme was hatched in August 2019 after Ina Steiner wrote a story about a lawsuit brought by eBay accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers. A half-hour after the article was published, then-CEO Devin Wenig sent another top eBay executive a message saying: “If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to court documents. That executive sent Wenig’s message to Baugh and called Ina Steiner a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.”

Live spiders and cockroaches: Ex-eBay executives get prison time in harassment plot (NPR)