Barbara Furlow-Smiles ex Facebok Diversity leader admits stealing and hoodwinking employer to the tune of $4M in elaborate kickback scheme that involved relatives, friends, nannies and even a former tutor among others to fund lavish lifestyle.
Motivated by greed, tempted by Facebook’s own hubris. 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.
Elaborate kickback scheme
The executive 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 (so much for diversity … and woke) 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.
Abuse of authority, power and trust under the guise of woke inclusion
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, the dailymail reported.
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 (did she forget anyone…?).
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.’
Meta the parent of Facebook, provided assistance and cooperation with the criminal investigation, prosecutors said.
Furlow-Smiles, who lives in Atlanta, is scheduled to be sentenced March 19. She is free on a $5,000 bond.
