Former global head of Facebook’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Barbara Furlow-Smiles acknowledged stealing more than $4 million (roughly Rs 32 crore) from the business using fake invoices, false accusations, and cash kickbacks.
She received the money between 2017 and 2021, and she used it to maintain an opulent lifestyle in Georgia and California.
Furlow-Smiles connected her corporate credit cards to payment services like PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App through manipulating the company’s expense account system. This allowed her to pay different people for services that she never actually gave to Facebook, the investigation has discovered.
These beneficiaries, which included friends, family, and business partners, would subsequently return a portion of the funds to Furlow-Smiles.
“Associates paid cash kickbacks in person and by Federal Express or mail, sometimes wrapping the cash in other items, such as T-shirts,” a press release by the attorneys said.
As per court documents, the old top manager, “knowingly devised and intended to devise a scheme and artifice to defraud Facebook and to obtain money and property by means of materially false and fraudulent pretences, representations, and promises, and by omission of material facts.”
She paid for personal expenses like hair salons, babysitters, and even $18,000 in preschool tuition with the money she stole, among other fraudulent activities.
Barbara Furlow-Smiles will be sentenced on March 19, 2024, after entering a guilty plea. She is free on a $5,000 bond until then.
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