Link to the story: https://www.wired.com/story/ebay-employees-charged-cyberstal...
Honestly I'm so disappointed in how far eBay's fallen. I opened my eBay account in 1999 - finding great deals, good sellers, sending money orders in the mail... those were the good times. And it was like a dream come true when I got a job there.
But eBay's lost its heart. Like all enormous and old businesses it got taken over by the suits, and the suits decided that a Marketplace was eBay's best future. Over the last decade they've been trying and failing, while being occasionally mired in scandal: GSI Commerce/eBay Enterprise (SEC violations, eventual divestiture), Skype (onerous terms for employees during sale to MS), Magento...
Policies are broken. Did you know "no returns" means a buyer can still make a return? Sellers take a HUGE risk selling on eBay these days, to the point where I don't list on eBay anymore.
And then this? If it were an episode of Silicon Valley we wouldn't believe it was possible. How the mighty have fallen.
PayPal should be stripe and coinbase combined with their early lead but they haven’t bothered to even try and compete.
There are several SEC filings around the departure of the CEO in Sept 2019[1][2] that line up with with the timeline mentioned in this article. Here's the relevant snippet from the 8-K: "On September 24, 2019, the Company and Mr. Wenig entered into a letter agreement regarding his departure (the “Wenig Letter”). Pursuant to the terms of the Wenig Letter, in exchange for his execution and non-revocation of a release of claims against the Company, the Company agreed to provide Mr. Wenig with (1) the payments required to be made to him under his letter agreement with the Company dated September 29, 2014 upon a termination without cause, which letter agreement was originally filed with..."
The key bit is that the CEO stepping down triggered a severance agreement for termination without cause. This lines up with the reporting that he engaged in unethical behavior and had to be forced out.
Here's the cash portion of his severance (there's a stock portion too):
"Non-Equity Related Payments. The Company will make the following payments to you in accordance with the terms of the Letter Agreement in the form of a lump sum payment within 30 days after the Effective Date (as such term is defined in section 17 of this Agreement):
(i) Two times your Annual Base Salary (as such term is defined in the Letter Agreement), which equals $2,000,000; and (ii) Two times your Bonus Amount (as such term is defined in the Letter Agreement), which equals S4,000,000."
[1] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/0001...
[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065088/000119312519...
it bears repeating
(Sometimes you get the bare, and sometimes the bare gets you.)