Facebook executive stole $4m from company

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Originally published at: Facebook executive stole $4m from company | Boing Boing

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Her name though. Wow.

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She was the head of DEI programming at Facebook, and I’ve already started to see “see DEI is just a grift, I told you so” from the MAGAts in my life on social media pointing to her.

Edit: clarified her title to be more accurate to what it was

Edit 2: and now the right wing media is starting to publish articles about it.

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“Barbara Furlow-Smiles who worked as a lead strategist, global head of employee resource groups and diversity engagement at Facebook, Inc., now known as Meta, from about January 2017 to September 2021…”

Now I want to know what sort of qualifications and prior work experience was claimed to get that position.

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That sounds like a scheme with an unenviably high loose ends who potentially know too much to dollars ratio.

I wonder if the feds will end up going after any of them(even if only to ensure robust cooperation), if they aren’t deemed worth the trouble; or if their role in this is more ‘suspicous’ than outright illegal.

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Sounds like a master criminal.
Pro tip: Don’t engage lots of others in your criminal conspiracy and embezzlement scheme. One of them will eventually turn on you, and they have a lot less to lose than you do.

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I mean she worked at facebook, so her money was coming from dishonesty and exploitation reardless. This is one of those things where if she was more skilled at fraud and theft she would have been promoted instead of arrested

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I think that if you can run up $4M on the company credit card and no one says “Wait a minute …” then Facebook has bigger problems than one corrupt employee.

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I’m conflicted on this one. On the one hand, fraud bad. On the other hand, she ripped off FB, one of the most evil companies on the planet.

Maybe a wash?

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Since when has a lavish lifestyle ever been possible through hard and honest work?

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We lock up the fraud and crook
Who steals millions from the Facebook
But leave loose the greater villains
Who steal the social from the millions

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I mean if you’re going to steal millions from your employee, at least be creative about it like this guy was:

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Barbara?

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I had a corporate p-card for a long time, and I probably racked up more than $4M over 10 years at a much smaller company than FB/Meta. The big differences were all of my purchases were project-specific with multiple PMs watching the books, and there was monthly auditing. The internal controls at the tech giants must be non-existent!

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Good moral question, why is being a co-conspirator in overthrowing democracy punished less than stealing four million?

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It’s pronounced SmeeLAY.

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Don’t people know you should only work with honest criminals who stay bought?

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Because overthrowing democracy is not the same thing as overthrowing capitalism.

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Yeah. I knew a woman at a small-ish state association who stole several hundred thousand in a similar scheme: making false invoices and paying her son’s “contracting company” for work that was never called for nor completed. She was the fiscal auditor for the small group, so got away with it for a few years, until an outside entity came in.
This story mostly makes me think FB is sloppy, even when it comes to their own interests.

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Qualifications for a high-level Facebook/Meta position? Does severe narcissist count? :slight_smile: