In the wake of the George Floyd riots, and with the helping hand of BlackRock’s Larry Fink, companies all over the world have created untold numbers of positions related to diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE). Of course, there also had to be Chief DIE Officers who pocket seven figures a year, despite a complete lack of qualifications in anything.

Companies were hoping, or at least telling us, that by diversifying their workforce, everything would change for the better. They did not convincingly show how adding people who cannot meet the hiring bar would be an improvement, but change is definitely happening. Just consider Boeing, whose planes are regularly disintegrating in flight. Let’s just pretend that the races are equal. Nothing to see here.

While the issues at Boeing potentially cost lives, Shaqueesa at Facebook only embezzled a few million dollars and as leftists like to tell us, it is only money, so it is not quite clear what the issue even is. According to reports,

A former head of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Facebook and Nike was sentenced to five years in prison this week for a brazen fraud scheme she ran while working at the companies. Barbara Furlow-Smiles pleaded guilty in December to stealing more than $5 million from the two massive companies, though the vast majority was taken during her time working for Facebook from 2017 to 2021. She used the stolen cash to fund a “luxury lifestyle,” prosecutors said.

Furlow-Smiles, who happens to be black, seems to think this is all quite unjust. In fact, she is adamant that she only wanted to do good in this world:

Furlow-Smiles said she had a lifetime commitment to being a voice for disenfranchised people, but acknowledged that her actions “added fuel to the fire of disengagement and attack of DEI efforts.”

The scheme she ran was about as sophisticated as you would expect:

Furlow-Smiles would pay people for services they did not do for the company, then have those people kick back the money to her. She brought dozens of people into her scheme, prosecutors said, including “relatives, former interns from a prior job, nannies, a hair stylist, and her university tutor.” Sometimes, Furlow-Smiles had Facebook directly pay third parties for personal goods or services, including $10,000 for specialty portraits and $18,000 for her child’s preschool tuition. She would then submit false reports about the work the people had done for the company.

Absolutely nobody could have predicted this. Most amazingly, after she got fired from Facebook for embezzling five million dollars, she just walked into Nike to continue with this kind of fraudulent behavior. You can bet that she thought she was entitled to all that money. Really, she is innocent. Everybody was embezzling millions:

In a sentencing memorandum, Hamilton argued that his client got caught up in Facebook’s “move fast and break things” culture and that she was far from the only person who exploited the company’s expenses for their own benefits.

I am used to corporate policies in which even accepting a gift, which may include a restaurant visit, in excess of a certain threshold is a breach of company policies and could get you fired. As it seems, you need to think bigger! What is a $150 dinner compared to collaborating with Jamal and Tyrone, telling him to submit an invoice for “consulting services” to the tune of a cool $400k, and asking for a kickback? On a related note, in any larger company you have a “preferred suppliers list”. If you want to buy something from anyone not on the list, you need to go through a lengthy process. Apparently, these safeguards do not matter when there is DIE money to be spent.