Photo: DANIEL LEAL / AFP / Getty Images
A former executive at Facebook pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud charges for stealing $4 million from the social media company. The U.S. Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Georgia said that 38-year-old Barbara Furlow-Smiles, who was the Lead Strategist, Global Head of Employee Resource Groups, and Diversity Engagement with the company, engaged in an "elaborate scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fictitious charges, and cash kickbacks."
Prosecutors said that Furlow-Smiles used her position to pay vendors and numerous individuals, including family and friends, for goods and services that were never provided. Those people then provided her with kickbacks, usually in the form of cash.
"To conceal the bogus charges on her Facebook credit cards, Furlow-Smiles submitted fraudulent expense reports, falsely claiming that her associates or their businesses performed work on programs and events for Facebook, such as providing swag or marketing services when, in fact, they had not done so," the attorney's office said in a press release.
In some cases, the vendors did provide goods and services to Facebook, but Furlow-Smiles submitted fraudulent and inflated invoices. Once Facebook paid the vendors, she told the vendors to return a portion of the money directly to her.
"This defendant abused a position of trust as a global diversity executive for Facebook to defraud the company of millions of dollars, ignoring the insidious consequences of undermining the importance of her DEI mission," said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. "Motivated by greed, she used her time to orchestrate an elaborate criminal scheme in which fraudulent vendors paid her kickbacks in cash. She even involved relatives, friends, and other associates in her crimes, all to fund a lavish lifestyle through fraud rather than hard and honest work."