Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ 23-year-old daughter Phoebe Gates has faced allegations that she was involved in “cookie stuffing,” a fraudulent practice, at the shopping startup company “Phia,” where she is a co-founder.
Phoebe Gates and her Stanford University classmate Sophia Kianni co-founded a company called “Phia.” It operates as a browser extension app that searches for discount coupons during online shopping. When customers use the coupons recommended by this app to purchase products, the sellers are informed of this information, and Phia earns commission revenue.

However, even if customers purchase items without using the Fia app, the fraudulent act of automatically recording fake tracking files called 'cookies' for the items they buy and obtaining money fraudulently is called 'cookie stuffing' fraud.
Regarding this matter, Ariel Givner, the chief attorney at Givner Law, said, ``In U.S. courts, this would generally be considered Federal Wire Fraud. This offense can carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years, along with the possibility of fines or restitution."
Earlier in July, Fia had said that it had learned about this issue only 24 hours beforehand and that it was a technical glitch in the software. However, Bloomberg has now reported that the company’s founders had known about it for at least seven months.
Quoting internal Slack conversations and reliable sources, the report says that this fraud was responsible for the majority of Fia’s revenue.

After these facilities were shut down in July, the company’s average daily revenue fell from $80,000 to between $28,000 and $10,000. In June, the company said that about 51% of the total sales value it claimed was generated through this “cookie stuffing.”
Regarding this, a spokesperson for FIA said, “All facilities that led to revenue being generated in an improper manner were immediately removed on July 7. We are reviewing all financial transactions.
We have begun the process of returning the amounts obtained through these improper methods to the respective brands. In addition, we are going to appoint an officer to ensure that such mistakes do not happen again. The reason for the company’s decline in revenue was the suspension of commercialization efforts. Bloomberg’s data analysis was exaggerated,” he said.
