A former head of Variety, Fairness and Inclusion initiatives at Fb and Nike was sentenced to 5 years in jail this week for a brazen fraud scheme she ran whereas working on the firms.
Barbara Furlow-Smiles pleaded responsible in December to stealing greater than $5 million from the 2 huge firms, although the overwhelming majority was taken throughout her time working for Fb from 2017 to 2021. She used the stolen money to fund a “luxurious way of life,” prosecutors stated.
“I blew it massive time,” Furlow-Smiles admitted in a letter to the choose in her case.
Furlow-Smiles stated she had a lifetime dedication to being a voice for disenfranchised folks, however acknowledged that her actions “added gasoline to the hearth of disengagement and assault of DEI efforts.”
Exploiting her entry to firm bank cards at Fb, which is now referred to as Meta, Furlow-Smiles would pay folks for companies they didn’t do for the corporate, then have these folks chill the cash to her.
She introduced dozens of individuals into her scheme, prosecutors stated, together with “relations, former interns from a previous job, nannies, a hair stylist, and her college tutor.”
Generally, Furlow-Smiles had Fb immediately pay third events for private items or companies, together with $10,000 for specialty portraits and $18,000 for her baby’s preschool tuition. She would then submit false reviews concerning the work the folks had accomplished for the corporate.
She stole about $4.9 million from Fb as a part of the scheme, prosecutors stated.
After Furlow-Smiles was terminated from Fb, she continued an identical scheme at Nike, the place she labored from 2021 to 2023. At Nike, Furlow-Smiles stole greater than $100,000.
Furlow-Smiles’ legal professional, Phillip Hamilton, had requested the court docket to not put her behind bars.
In a sentencing memorandum, Hamilton argued that his shopper bought caught up in Fb’s “transfer quick and break issues” tradition and that she was removed from the one one who exploited the corporate’s bills for their very own advantages.
“Barbara … shortly realized that coworkers had been mates with distributors and relied on these distributors to do sure issues, which included offering kickbacks for referring Fb enterprise to them. It was the norm,” Hamilton alleged within the memorandum.
The variety of Variety, Fairness and Inclusion positions like those held by Furlow-Smiles skyrocketed in 2020 after the homicide of George Floyd, when many firms had been compelled to reckon with racial hiring disparities or points inside the office.
However by the point Furlow-Smiles was arrested in December, the positions had been falling out of favor. DEI initiatives turned a frequent goal of Republican politicians, and when layoffs hit the tech sector, the positions had been usually amongst those who had been first slashed.
