https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne...steals-millions.html

A former global diversity executive at Facebook has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $4 million from the company.

Barbara Furlow-Smiles, 38, served as Lead Strategist, Global Head of Employee Resource Groups and Diversity Engagement at Facebook from about January 2017 to September 2021.

During that time, lawyers from the US Attorney's Office in the Northern District of Georgia said she cheated and defraud the company out of over $4 million.

She charged Facebook fraudulent invoices, then received kickbacks and used the money to live a luxury lifestyle in California and Georgia.

'This defendant abused a position of a 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 US 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.'

Furlow-Smiles scheme operated in two ways to cause Facebook to pay for goods and services they never received which she received kickbacks from.

The former diversity executive linked PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts to her Facebook credit cards and used those accounts to pay friends, relatives, and other associates for goods and services purportedly provided to Facebook.

However, those individuals never provided goods and services to the company. To conceal the fraudulent charges Furlow-Smiles submitted fake expense reports claiming her associates provided services such as merchandise or marketing services.

Once they received payment from Facebook, her associates would send most of the money back to Furlow-Smiles either in cash or transfer to accounts in her or her husbands name.

To conceal the transactions sometimes her associates would wrap up the cash in other items like t-shirts or she would direct her associates to pay each other.

Furlow-Smiles also caused Facebook to onboard or provide contracts to people who paid her kickbacks including friends, relatives, former interns from a prior job, nannies and babysitters, a hair stylist and her university tutor.

She also got the company to make payments for her benefits in other ways including payments of nearly $10,000 to an artist for specialty portraits and more than $18,000 to a preschool for tuition.

'Furlow-Smiles used lies and deceit to defraud both vendors and Facebook employees,' said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta.

'The FBI works hard to make sure greed like this doesn't pay off and those who commit fraud are held accountable.'

Furlow-Smiles sentencing is scheduled for March 19 before US District Judge Steven D. Grimberg.

I really can’t see how such fraud could occur now in any corporation now a days given Sarbanes Oxley.

But then again, I’m sure diversity consultants have the highest levels of integrity and won’t entertain thoughts of kickbacks.

I wish she would have taken more from the Muther Zucker.

One DIE fraudster down, how many thousands to go?

It’s a start!

quote:

position of a trust

A diversity officer? Bwahahahaha!!!

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I really can’t see how such fraud could occur now in any corporation now a days given Sarbanes Oxley.

The amount of SOX compliance we have to do when there are pricing or discount changes can get overwhelming sometimes. I get the reasons for it but, good grief it puts everyone in the approval chain in the spotlight, not to mention sucks up bandwidth.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

position of a trust

A diversity officer? Bwahahahaha!!!

Well she did diversify funds.

A hyphenated last name and everything.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
A hyphenated last name and everything.

Hopefully she’ll drop the “Smiles” part of it when this over!

She's no longer all Smiles, but she is on Furlough

Any of the rest of her co-conspirators going down with her?

quote:

Originally posted by Citadel:
Any of the rest of her co-conspirators going down with her?

Sure seems like the IRS should be going after the group. Did not see anything on that.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I really can’t see how such fraud could occur now in any corporation now a days given Sarbanes Oxley.

The amount of SOX compliance we have to do when there are pricing or discount changes can get overwhelming sometimes. I get the reasons for it but, good grief it puts everyone in the approval chain in the spotlight, not to mention sucks up bandwidth.

When SOX first came down, I thought it was a stupid implementation as it placed all the workload of compliance on everybody but the top level which was the culprit in the case of Enron which spurred SOX.

It's been a bad week for the DIE agenda, loving it! At least that's 4 mil less Zuckerputz had to help stuff drop boxes.

She probably considered it an advance on her reparations.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
I really can’t see how such fraud could occur now in any corporation now a days given Sarbanes Oxley.

The article doesn't say how she got caught. Perhaps it was internal controls and it was the company that brought in the FBI?

quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
<snip>
Furlow-Smiles sentencing is scheduled for March 19 before US District Judge Steven D. Grimberg.

I hope she gets a Grim sentence.

Here she is, folks:

Why are those raccoons on her sleeves?