Former eBay Director of Global Resiliency and Security Operations David Harville pleaded guilty on Thursday to five felony counts related to the 2019 eBay cyberstalking campaign. Harville had been facing a trial at the end of this month along with codefendant Jim Baugh, eBay’s former Senior Director of Global Security.
Baugh pleaded guilty to nine counts on April 25th, making Harville the last of the seven eBay security employees charged by the government who had yet to plead. Five defendants had pleaded guilty in 2020, one of whom was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a year of home detention in 2021.
Harville continues to own tactical weapons company Variant One that he describes on the website as a “veteran owned small business with deep roots to the US law enforcement and Department of Defense sectors.”
He dissolved the LLC registered in California two months after his indictment on charges of stalking and witness tampering and reincorporated in Nevada, later adding his wife Heidi Harville as President of Variant One Industries Inc.
Update 5/13/2022: Here’s a link to the plea agreement on CourtListener.
Note: The government press release about today’s change-of-plea hearing will be added below when it becomes available.
See the following disclosure.
Update 6/16/2022: As can be seen above, we left a placeholder for the DOJ press release, as it is standard practice for the Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts to issue press releases on defendant pleas.
As it did not issue one in this case, we asked the DOJ media relations department to provide us with the information about the plea so we could update this article.
The DOJ did issue press releases about the 6 other defendants in the eBay cyberstalking case, so we also asked why it hadn’t issued one for this defendant.
The DOJ did not respond to our media inquiry on this matter.
Update 6/17/2022: The media relations department of the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts responded today with a link to the press release which was posted on June 9, 2022 (2 days after our initial inquiry).
what a creep!!! hope he gets the max
I’d heard this guy was also an ex-cop; wouldn’t you think he’d KNOW BETTER THAN TO DO WHAT HE IS ACCUSED OF?
Apparently, it’s very easy to get a ridiculously high-paying job as “Director of” or “Senior Director of” something while honing your proficiency at being a moron. Or does tenure at eBay bring about such stupidity?
Wow, seven for seven plead guilty. This is of course both good and bad for the civil case. It shows the guilt but removes discovery and witness testimony.
I hope that the civil matter is large enough to really hurt. I would like to see a decent seven-figure settlement/award for the two of you PLUS an eight-figure award/settlement to support and expand this site.
After all, eBay and its employees didn’t just harm you, they tried to silence the press as well. I feel that a trust fund big enough to ensure at least 10 more years of this website (with a large expansion) would be warranted. Perhaps the ability to hire additional staff to track the progress of former eBay execs at their new jobs. 😉
It seems logical to me that there wasn’t much for them to do at eBay so they invented a problem to ‘fix’. This publication is almost totally (judging from the comments) read by sellers. As the vast majority of comments are critical of eBay, what a great way for eBay to learn how to improve! I never got the impression that positive comments were unwelcome here.
It’s been stated for years that eBay only hires bottom feeders, and here is living proof! His “veteran owned” tag makes the rest of us want to throw up.