Ex-Facebook Diversity, Equity, Inclusion exec who used company cards to steal millions gets prison time [View all]

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Barbara Furlow-Smiles pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge in December, admitting to defrauding Facebook between January 2017 and September 2021.

According to prosecutors, Furlow-Smiles orchestrated a long-running and lucrative scheme to funnel money from Facebook corporate credit cards to friends, relatives and others. After receiving the funds, the recipients would then kick much of the money back to Furlow-Smiles.

Facebook eventually fired Furlow-Smiles after she stole more than $4.9 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia said, but her fraud continued when she worked for Nike from November 2021 to February 2023. There she stole $120,000 more, prosecutors said.
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Along with a five-year, three-month prison sentence, Furlow-Smiles has been ordered to pay almost $5 million in restitution to Facebook, now Meta, and $121,000 to Nike. Prosecutors got the amount of restitution they’d sought from the judge, but shy of their suggested 6.5 years of prison time.

Furlow-Smiles’ lawyers had argued for no prison time and home confinement in their sentencing memo — they cited “collateral punishment,” including “a professional death and an emotional assault upon her and her family” from news stories about her conduct, as well as an “excommunication from the DEI community.” She wrote in her own letter to the judge that she “blew it big time” and that she “became the poster child of being a fraud in a space I dedicated 15+ years of my life building.”

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/facebook-exec-steals-millions-prison-19464029.php



‘I blew it big time.’ Former Facebook DEI head gets 5 years in prison for stealing millions

“I blew it big time,” Furlow-Smiles admitted in a letter to the judge in her case.

Furlow-Smiles said she had a lifetime commitment to being a voice for disenfranchised people, but acknowledged that her actions “added fuel to the fire of disengagement and attack of DEI efforts.”

Exploiting her access to company credit cards at Facebook, which is now called Meta, Furlow-Smiles would pay people for services they did not do for the company, then have those people kick back the money to her.


She brought dozens of people into her scheme, prosecutors said, including “relatives, former interns from a prior job, nannies, a hair stylist, and her university tutor.”

Sometimes, Furlow-Smiles had Facebook directly pay third parties for personal goods or services, including $10,000 for specialty portraits and $18,000 for her child’s preschool tuition. She would then submit false reports about the work the people had done for the company.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-17/former-facebook-dei-head-gets-5-years-in-prison-for-fraud