The second one is certainly wrong. You could conceivably put a comma there but the sentence would be just as good without it. The first semicolon may be correct, but the clause before it just doesn't make sense. Perhaps he meant to write "in them either" and got the words mixed up. But even then it doesn't make sense in reference to my comment BTW(2), which was about the word "semicolon" having no hyphen.
I detest semicolons. And Colons. Except for lists. If a comma won't do, then you need to put a full stop and start a new sentence.
