Former Facebook diversity chief pleads guilty to stealing $4m

A former diversity programme manager at Facebook has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $4 million from the social media company through fake business deals to “fund a lavish lifestyle’, according to federal prosecutors.

Barbara Furlow-Smiles, 38, who led a number of Facebook diversity, equity and inclusion schemes from 2017 until 2021, stole the money “through an elaborate scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fictitious charges, and cash kickbacks’, the attorney’s office in Atlanta said.

Furlow-Smiles, who pleaded guilty in an Atlanta federal court this week, was not the most senior leader of Facebook’s diversity programmes.

Keri Farley, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Atlanta office, said: “Furlow-Smiles used lies and deceit to defraud both vendors and Facebook employees. The FBI works hard to make sure greed like this doesn’t pay off and those who commit fraud are held accountable.”

A filing states that Furlow-Smiles committed the fraud by linking PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts to credit cards given to her by Facebook and used those accounts to pay friends, relatives, nannies, babysitters, a hairstylist and others for goods and services that were never provided to the company.

After those people received the money, they returned a percentage of the funds to Furlow-Smiles, prosecutors said. The kickbacks were paid in cash and through transfers to accounts in various names, including the husband of Furlow-Smiles, prosecutors claimed.

To conceal the fraud, Furlow-Smiles submitted false expense reports, claiming the individuals performed work on Facebook programmes and events, the Department of Justice said. After they were hired, Furlow-Smiles allegedly approved fake and inflated invoices. She received a portion of the money paid to the vendors.

Furlow-Smiles also misled Facebook, which is owned by Meta Platforms, into paying money to entities who did not provide kickbacks, including nearly $10,000 to an artist who created specialty portraits and more than $18,000 to a pre-school.

Ryan Buchanan, the US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, said: “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.”