‘She not only threw away a lucrative career, but will serve time behind bars for her excessive greed,’ FBI special agent Keri Farley said.
A former Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) manager at Facebook and Nike has been sentenced to over 5 years in prison for stealing over $5 million in what prosecutors said was an elaborate criminal scheme involving fake vendors and cash kickbacks.
Barbara Furlow-Smiles, who led Facebook’s DEI programs for years and served as Nike’s senior DEI director for just over a year, was sentenced on May 13 to five years and three months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, per the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Ms. Furlow-Smiles, who prosecutors said stole over $4.9 million from Facebook and over $120,000 from Nike, has also been ordered to pay a total of over $5 million to the two companies as restitution for her crimes.
She was convicted of wire fraud in December 2023 after pleading guilty in what prosecutors described as an “elaborate criminal scheme” to defraud her former employers of millions of dollars, which she used to live a luxury lifestyle in California and Georgia.
“Her prison sentence reflects the consequences of her decision to orchestrate an intricate scheme to defraud two of her employers for personal profit,” U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said in a May 13 statement.
Ms. Furlow-Smiles’s attorney was not immediately available for comment.
‘Elaborate Criminal Scheme’
Prosecutors said in charging documents that, while in her role as a DEI executive, she devised a plan that involved persuading Facebook to onboard a number of vendors that were owned and operated by her friends and associates.
She then approved purchase requisitions for these vendors to provide services to Facebook and then signed off on fraudulent and inflated invoices on the basis of which the company paid these vendors—who then gave her back most of the money.
“Motivated by greed, she used her time to orchestrate an elaborate criminal scheme in which fraudulent vendors paid her kickbacks in cash,” Mr. Buchanan said in a statement on Dec. 12, 2023, after Ms. Furlow-Smiles pleaded guilty to her crimes.
Some people Ms. Furlow-Smiles recruited to participate in her fraudulent scheme were interns from a prior job, nannies and babysitters, a hair stylist, and her university tutor.
By Tom Ozimek
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