Good morning, Broadsheet readers! A new bill against AI deepfakes is introduced in the Senate, X CEO Linda Yaccarino eyes sports docuseries, and Fortune writer Lila MacLellan dives into how a rising DEI star stole more than $5 million from Meta and Nike. Have a terrific Thursday.
- The Facebook fraudster. Barbara Furlow-Smiles was once a rising star in DEI at Facebook. Hired in 2017, she spent more than four years leading the company’s employee resource group before taking a job for more money and a bigger title at Nike, where she worked until early 2023. If you’re familiar with her name, however, it’s likely because of what she was doing in the shadows at both firms.
As I report in a recent Fortune feature, Furlow-Smiles pleaded guilty last December to stealing $4.9 million from the social media giant now called Meta and taking more than $100,000 from Nike. She faces a five-year prison sentence that will begin next month. The FBI found that she had siphoned the money by setting up kickback schemes with both real and invented vendors, and by linking her personal payment apps—like PayPal and Venmo—to the corporate credit card. The fake vendors, the agents found, were friends and family who invoiced Facebook through Furlow-Smiles and then sent some of the money they “earned” back to her in cash.
