BOSTON (AP) — Online retailer eBay Inc. will pay a $3 million fine to resolve criminal charges over a harassment campaign waged by employees who sent live spiders, cockroaches and other disturbing items to the home of a Massachusetts couple, according to court papers filed Thursday.

The Justice Department charged eBay with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice more than three years after the employees were prosecuted in the extensive scheme to intimidate David and Ina Steiner. The couple produced an online newsletter called EcommerceBytes that upset eBay executives with its coverage.

California-headquartered eBay accepted responsibility for the employees’ actions and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement that could result in the charges against the company being dismissed if it complies with certain conditions, according to the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts.

“EBay engaged in absolutely horrific, criminal conduct. The company’s employees and contractors involved in this campaign put the victims through pure hell, in a petrifying campaign aimed at silencing their reporting and protecting the eBay brand,” acting Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Josh Levy said in an emailed statement.

The deferred prosecution agreement calls for an independent monitor to oversee the company for three years to ensure its compliance with the terms and federal law. The $3 million criminal penalty was the maximum possible fine under the charges.

Ebay CEO Jamie Iannone called the company’s conduct in 2019 “wrong and reprehensible.”

“Since these events occurred, new leaders have joined the company, and eBay has strengthened its policies, procedures, controls and training,” Iannone said in a statement. “EBay remains committed to upholding high standards of conduct and ethics and to making things right with the Steiners.”

The couple, who served as the newsletter’s publisher and editor, have sued eBay in federal court, describing how cyberstalking and upsetting deliveries of anonymously sent packages upended their lives.

Ina Steiner received harassing and sometimes threatening Twitter messages as well as dozens of strange emails from groups like an irritable bowel syndrome patient support group and the Communist Party of the United States.

Along with a box of live spiders and the cockroaches, the couple had a funeral wreath, a bloody pig mask and a book about surviving the loss of a spouse show up at their door. Their home address also was posted online with announcements inviting strangers to yard sales and parties.

In a statement published on their website Thursday, the Steiners said eBay’s actions had “a damaging and permanent impact” on them “emotionally, psychologically, physically, reputationally, and financially.” They also expressed frustration that more executives were not charged.

“We strongly pushed federal prosecutors for further indictments to deter corporate executives and board members from creating a culture where stalking and harassment is tolerated or encouraged,” they said.

The harassment started in 2019 after Ina Steiner wrote a story about a lawsuit brought by eBay that accused Amazon of poaching its sellers, according to court records.

A half-hour after the article was published, eBay’s then-CEO, Devin Wenig, sent another top executive a message saying: “If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to court documents. The executive sent Wenig’s message to James Baugh, who was eBay’s senior director of safety and security, and called Ina Steiner a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.”

Baugh was among seven former employees who ultimately pleaded guilty to charges in the case. He was sentenced in 2022 to almost five years in prison. Another former executive, David Harville, was sentenced to two years.

Wenig, who stepped down as CEO in 2019, was not criminally charged in the case and has denied having any knowledge of the harassment campaign or ever telling anyone to do anything illegal. In the civil case, his lawyers have said the “take her down” quote was taken out of context and the natural inference should be that he was referring to taking “lawful action,” not “a series of bizarre criminal acts.”

The Associated Press sent an email seeking comment on Thursday to a spokesperson for Wenig.

Baugh, whom prosecutors described as the mastermind of the scheme, at one point recruited Harville to go with him to Boston to spy on the Steiners, authorities said. Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee went to the couple’s home in the hopes of installing a GPS tracker on their car, prosecutors said. The trio found the garage locked, so Harville bought tools with a plan to break in, prosecutors said.

Harville’s attorneys have said he had no involvement in or knowledge about the threatening messages or deliveries sent by his colleagues.

Baugh’s lawyers have said their client faced relentless pressure from Wenig and other executives to do something about the Steiners. Baugh alleged he was then pushed out by the company when “an army of outside lawyers descended to conduct an ‘internal investigation’ aimed at saving the company and its top executives from prosecution.”

TUSCALOOSA (AP) — Nick Saban’s coaching reign has come to an end. His dominance over college football, however, will forever linger in lore.

Saban, who won seven national championships — more than any major college football coach — and turned Alabama back into a national powerhouse that shattered an Associated Press poll record for most consecutive seasons at No. 1, announced his retirement Wednesday.

“The University of Alabama has been a very special place to Terry and me,” Saban said in a statement. “It is not just about how many games we won and lost, but it’s about the legacy and how we went about it. We always tried to do it the right way.”

Saban, 72, restored a Crimson Tide program once ruled by Paul “Bear” Bryant to the top of college football after taking over in 2007. As he stacked his wins, Saban’s celebrity status reached royalty levels in the state of Alabama.

For a time, he was the sport’s overlord and there was little that could be done to stop him.

Saban won six of his titles during his 17 seasons at Alabama. He won his first with LSU in 2003. His Tide teams were ranked No. 1 in the AP poll in a remarkable 15 straight seasons, breaking the old record of seven held by Miami.

Saban’s wife, Terry, posted about their “incredible run” at Alabama on the Facebook page for Nick’s Kids Foundation.

“We hope that the Saban legacy will be about helping others and making a positive difference in people’s lives as well as the winning tradition on the field,” Terry Saban wrote.

Saban’s tutelage helped launch the head coaching careers of Georgia’s Kirby Smart, Texas’ Steve Sarkisian and Mississippi’s Lane Kiffin, among others.

He finished just shy of the top in his final season, leading the Tide from a shaky start to a Southeastern Conference championship and back into the College Football Playoff before falling in overtime to Michigan in a semifinal game at the Rose Bowl.

Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne called him “one of the greatest coaches of all time, in any sport.”

Saban led the Tide to nine SEC championships and won his first national title at Alabama with a 14-0 season in 2009. Titles came again in 2011, 2012, 2015, 2017 and 2020. He also won the SEC with LSU in 2001 and 2003.

After a 7-6 debut in 2007, Saban won at least 10 games in his final 16 seasons.

It wasn’t until the rise of Dabo Swinney’s Clemson teams in the late 2010s and later Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs that any school could be considered a consistent threat to the Tide.

Saban has stepped away as the fabric of college football undergoes dramatic change. Colorado’s Deion Sanders, a coach who has sought to capitalize on the intervention of players profiting financially from their play on the field, said on social media “College Football just lost the GOAT.”

“WOW! I knew it would happen 1 day soon but not this soon,” he wrote. “The game has change so much that it chased the GOAT away. College football let’s hold up our mirrors and say HONESTLY what u see.”

Terry Saban addressed the changes to college football in her post, referencing her husband’s famed “process.”

“The rules for the game of football may change, but the ‘process’ will never go out of style: hard work, discipline, the relentless pursuit of a worthy goal, not cutting corners, and doing things the right way for the sake of constant personal improvement, not for the scoreboard,” she wrote.

Saban made a two-year foray into the NFL with the Miami Dolphins before returning to college to revive one of the nation’s most storied programs, which hadn’t won a national title in 15 years. Saban is 297-71-1 as a college head coach, with stops at Toledo, Michigan State and LSU. But Alabama is where he cemented his status as one of college football’s greatest coaches.

He coached Alabama’s first four Heisman Trophy winners and numerous NFL players, going 206-29, a winning clip of 87.7%. His teams produced 44 first-round draft picks, including last year’s No. 1 quarterback Bryce Young.

During that span, he also adapted to the changing times of up-tempo offenses, churning out high-scoring teams after winning with some of the nation’s best defenses, along with the new NIL and transfer rules.

He led Toledo to a Mid-American Conference championship in 1990, his lone season as that program’s coach. Saban worked as Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator with the Cleveland Browns for four seasons before becoming the first Michigan State coach to lead his first three teams to bowl games.

“I think he’s the greatest coach in the history of football,” Michigan State basketball coach and longtime Saban friend Tom Izzo said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “There are a lot of great coaches, but what he’s done and the consistency that he did it — in an era where so many people and things are coming at you — is remarkable.”

Saban’s latest team dealt with plenty of adversity early, including a loss to Texas, but rebounded with the emergence of quarterback Jalen Milroe to upset then-No. 1 Georgia in the SEC championship game.

Saban didn’t sound like a coach looking to give up the job any time soon after the game. But it wasn’t a bad way to go, even without the title.

“This is one of the most amazing seasons in Alabama football history in terms of where this team came from, what they were able to accomplish and what they were able to do, winning the SEC championship, and really, really proud of this group,” he said. “I just wish that I could have done more as a coach to help them be successful and help them finish, and all we can do now is learn from the lessons that sometimes failings bring to us.”

SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey feels Saban isn’t done entirely with college football.

“Knowing Nick? He’s not walking away from the game. He’s walking away from a role,” Sankey said.