DEI – or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – has been one of the most popular corporate phenomenons of the last several years. At root, DEI purports to be a means for restructuring society to be less dominated by the existing majority white population.
Many corporations have spent millions on training programs and initiatives in this vein, and have hired self-styled “experts” in the matter.
Facebook is finding out the hard way that this phenomenon might be a little less about equalizing society and more about grifting off naive suckers, as their former “diversity chief” pleads guilty in a massive fraud case.
NEW – Former Facebook "diversity and inclusion" tsar Barbara Furlow-Smiles has pleaded guilty to stealing more than $4 million from the tech giant to fund her lavish lifestyle — Telegraph pic.twitter.com/Am5MyCi9LP
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 14, 2023
RELATED: MSNBC Guest: Americans Should Get Used To Inflation, Lower Prices Are ‘Kind Of A Bad Thing’
‘Motivated By Greed’
One might be mistaken for thinking stories about racial quotas, racial preferences, and official discrimination against certain races might be happening in some other country. Unfortunately, the soft Marxist paradigm is firmly planted right here in the formerly free world.
Yahoo News reports:
Barbara Furlow-Smiles, a global diversity executive at Facebook between 2017 and 2021, syphoned off cash through an “elaborate scheme” involving fake suppliers and cash kickbacks, US prosecutors said.
The Atlanta resident was “motivated by greed”, US Attorney Ryan Buchanan said, “ignoring the insidious consequences of undermining the importance of her DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] mission”.
Ms Furlow-Smiles, 38, was employed as “lead strategist, global head of employee resource groups and diversity engagement” at Facebook, which has since rebranded as Meta.
As the above quote from the US attorney shows, even when the grifters get busted cold, it is presented as a divergence from the DEI mission – which is false.
Furlow-Smiles just did what she said she was going to do, when all the slogans and propaganda are set aside: separate fools from their money.
A Spending Spree Like No Other
Yahoo added, “She also used company cash to directly fund her lifestyle, spending $10,000 on an artist for bespoke portraits and $18,000 on pre-school tutors.”
And there’s more.
The former global diversity exec at @Meta has pleaded guilty in federal court to defrauding the woke company out of more than $4m. She led the DEI programs at Facebook and used the company accounts to pay her friends & family, who then gave her cash. Read:https://t.co/zBwKNSEYri
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) December 14, 2023
And then there’s the personal angle. Imagine the gall of stealing $4 million to recklessly throw away on conspicuous consumption.
NBC News added that Furlow-Smiles “caused Facebook to pay people for goods and services that were never actually provided to the company and then had those individuals pay her kickbacks.”
“These individuals included friends, relatives, former interns from a prior job, nannies and babysitters, a hair stylist, and her university tutor,’ the U.S. Attorney’s Office said,” according to the report.
In other words, she did her job.