{"id":6452,"date":"2026-08-12T21:08:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6452"},"modified":"2026-08-12T21:08:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:08:40","slug":"bill-gates-daughter-phoebe-accused-of-cookie-stuffing-scheme-that-has-max-penalty-of-20-years-in-prison-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6452","title":{"rendered":"Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe accused of ‘cookie stuffing’ scheme that has max penalty of 20 years in prison: reports"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Bill Gates\u2019 \u201cnepo baby\u201d daughter Phoebe Gates, 23, has been accused of \u201ccookie stuffing\u201d at her multibillion-dollar startup, Phia \u2013 an illicit practice that comes with a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison, according to reports.<\/p>\n

Read more Lindsay Clancy murder trial live updates: Killer mom begged crisis line for help twice \u2014 but was turned away<\/a><\/p>\n

Phia \u2013 a digital personal shopping assistant co-founded by Gates with fellow Stanford alum Sophia Kianni \u2013 reacted with shock in July following reports that it was dropping more web \u201ccookies\u201d than it should, taking undue credit for online sales at retail partners.<\/p>\n

The company released a statement that it had only learned of the issue \u201cwithin the last 24 hours,\u201d pledging to fix the glitch \u2013 but according to a new Bloomberg report, the young entrepreneurs had known for at least seven months that their startup was overcounting its sales commissions.<\/p>\n

Ariel Givner, founder and principal attorney at Givner Law, warned in a post on X Tuesday that \u201ccookie stuffing\u201d can come with serious consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s typically treated as federal wire fraud in US courts. There\u2019s a possibility of a max penalty of up to 20 years prison + fines\/restitution,\u201d Givner wrote.<\/p>\n

A Phia spokesperson told The Post: \u201cAny features causing misattributions were immediately removed over a month ago on July 7. We are reviewing every transaction, we are fully committed to and have already begun issuing all transaction reversals to brand partners as a result of any misattribution, and we are hiring a head of compliance to make sure something like this never happens again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are now continuing to connect our users with items and offers from thousands of brand partners,\u201d the spokesperson added. \u201cWe will learn from this and want to ensure our users have the best possible shopping experience, with features like our new digital closet and more to come.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The startup \u2013 which raised a jaw-dropping $30 million in 2025 from backers including Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner and Spanx founder Sara Blakely \u2013 operates as a browser extension, finding discount codes for customers across online retailers when they click on Phia at checkout.<\/p>\n

When a shopper uses Phia by selecting one of its coupon codes, the software drops a \u201ccookie\u201d \u2013 which tracks activity across the web \u2013 to show that retailer it helped drive the sale and earn itself a commission.<\/p>\n

But Kianni and Gates \u2013 the Microsoft princess whose dad is worth $108.4 billion, according to Forbes \u2013 were aware of features that dropped cookies into the checkout process even when customers did not use Phia, according to people familiar with the matter and internal Slack messages reviewed by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

The illicit cookie stuffing traced back to at least December across sales at several major retailers, including Nike, Gap and Nordstrom, and seemingly made up the bulk of Phia\u2019s revenue, according to the news outlet.<\/p>\n

After Phia disabled the features in July, average daily revenue at the company plummeted from around $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, according to Bloomberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Karoline Leavitt leaving White House press secretary job, shortly after returning from maternity leave<\/a><\/p>\n

In June, cookie stuffing accounted for about 51% of the merchandise value that Phia claimed credit for selling, the report said.<\/p>\n

A Phia spokesperson said part of the steep revenue decline in July was caused by the company disabling most of its monetization efforts at the time, not just the cookie stuffing, and that Bloomberg\u2019s analysis of the data was overstated.<\/p>\n

According to an internal dashboard viewed by Bloomberg, what Phia initially called a software bug in July was actually a feature called \u201cenable coupon auto drop,\u201d which the company was able to switch on and off.<\/p>\n

At one point, Gates \u2013 who insisted that she wanted to succeed without her billionaire parents\u2019 help, saying she has \u201csuch a desire to prove myself\u201d \u2013 grew concerned that Phia wasn\u2019t generating as much commission from Etsy as she had expected.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She messaged developers to make sure that Phia was dropping a cookie each time its browser extension popped up, even if the shopper didn\u2019t click a coupon, which would allow it to earn commission for the total gross merchandise value, the report said.<\/p>\n

In a Slack channel on Dec. 18, she wrote: \u201cworried this is an issue across the board\u2026can u confirm auto pop for cookie drop is live on ALL sites w a coupon to confirm we are monetizing on all gmv.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a separate incident, Kianni suggested a feature that would drop a cookie each time a user simply tried to close out a Phia pop-up, according to Bloomberg.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A colleague told Kianni that Google Chrome prohibits extensions from dropping affiliate cookies on \u201cdismiss events,\u201d or when a customer simply tries to close out a notification, and Kianni conceded.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

But she added: \u201cI guess we could say that the user is trying to open us and roll it back if they complain,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

A Phia spokesperson told Bloomberg that this feature was never implemented.<\/p>\n

Impact.com, one of Phia\u2019s affiliates, had already suspended the network and reallocated commissions that it had set aside to pay Gates\u2019 company, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Though Phia said it has already started looking into transfer reversals, it might have to issue extra refunds since the policy was in place from December through July, a much longer time period than initially thought.<\/p>\n

Read more Lindsay Clancy erupts into sobs, yells as medical examiner testifies about autopsy of her daughter: \u2018I can\u2019t do it!\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Gates\u2019 \u201cnepo baby\u201d daughter Phoebe Gates, 23, has been accused of \u201ccookie stuffing\u201d at her multibillion-dollar startup, Phia \u2013 an illicit practice that comes with a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison, according to reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\nBill Gates' daughter Phoebe accused of 'cookie stuffing' scheme that has max penalty of 20 years in prison: reports - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6452\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bill Gates' daughter Phoebe accused of 'cookie stuffing' scheme that has max penalty of 20 years in prison: reports - 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