Of course, she’ll never feel the discomfort of steel bracelets, let alone see the inside of a prison cell, but it’s interesting view of a seething, scheming daughter angered at being disinherited — well sort of disinherited; kinda, anyway.

Bill Gates’ daughter Phoebe accused of ‘cookie stuffing’ scheme that has max penalty of 20 years in prison: reports

Bill Gates’ “nepo baby” daughter Phoebe Gates, 23, has been accused of “cookie stuffing” at her multibillion-dollar startup, Phia – an illicit practice that comes with a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison, according to reports.
Phia – a digital personal shopping assistant co-founded by Gates with fellow Stanford alum Sophia Kianni – reacted with shock in July following reports that it was dropping more web “cookies” than it should, taking undue credit for online sales at retail partners.

[Wikipedia explains: “An investigation by Bloomberg News, as well as findings from independent consultant Ben Edelman, found that if a user shopped at an online retailer — even if they arrived at the site on their own or through another affiliate program like Wirecutter — Phia would open a new tab in the background. During the checkout process, Phia would override the referral codes from other affiliates and instead inject its own, allowing it to take credit for and potentially receive a commission on a purchase it didn’t earn. Edelman stated that statements made by the leadership of Phia, claiming it was a "bug", are misleading and concluded that "Deliberately building and deploying a feature called "auto_drop" that automatically sets affiliate tracking — cannot be dismissed as a mere bug. It's intentional, and it violates both trust and contract".

The company released a statement that it had only learned of the issue “within the last 24 hours,” pledging to fix the glitch – 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.
Ariel Givner, founder and principal attorney at Givner Law, warned in a post on X Tuesday that “cookie stuffing” can come with serious consequences.
“It’s typically treated as federal wire fraud in US courts. There’s a possibility of a max penalty of up to 20 years prison + fines/restitution,” Givner wrote.
The startup – which raised a jaw-dropping $30 million in 2025 from backers including Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner and Spanx founder Sara Blakely – operates as a browser extension, finding discount codes for customers across online retailers when they click on Phia at checkout.
When a shopper uses Phia by selecting one of its coupon codes, the software drops a “cookie” – which tracks activity across the web – to show that retailer it helped drive the sale and earn itself a commission.
But Kianni and Gates – the Microsoft princess whose dad is worth $108.4 billion, according to Forbes – 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.
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’s revenue, according to the news outlet.
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.
In June, cookie stuffing accounted for about 51% of the merchandise value that Phia claimed credit for selling, the report said.
According to an internal dashboard viewed by Bloomberg, what Phia initially called a software bug in July was actually a feature called “enable coupon auto drop,” which the company was able to switch on and off.
At one point, Gates – who insisted that she wanted to succeed without her billionaire parents’ help, saying she has “such a desire to prove myself” – grew concerned that Phia wasn’t generating as much commission from Etsy as she had expected.
She messaged developers to make sure that Phia was dropping a cookie each time its browser extension popped up, even if the shopper didn’t click a coupon, which would allow it to earn commission for the total gross merchandise value, the report said.
In a Slack channel on Dec. 18, she wrote: “worried this is an issue across the board…can u confirm auto pop for cookie drop is live on ALL sites w a coupon to confirm we are monetizing on all gmv.”
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.
A colleague told Kianni that Google Chrome prohibits extensions from dropping affiliate cookies on “dismiss events,” or when a customer simply tries to close out a notification, and Kianni conceded.
But she added: “I guess we could say that the user is trying to open us and roll it back if they complain,” according to the report.
How impoverished is poor Phoebe that she was forced to defraud? Practically penniless, if you don’t count the millions or billions coming her way when Mother Melinda falls off the deck of their motoryacht.

AI Overview

Bill Gates plans to leave his three children less than 1% of his massive fortune, meaning over 99% will go to charity. However, because his net worth exceeds $100 billion, that "less than 1%" still amounts to more than $1 billion for each child.

The Inheritance Plan

The Share: Each child (Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe) will receive a tiny fraction of the total wealth, calculated at under 1%.
The Value: With a net worth hovering around $100–$150 billion, 1% translates to roughly $1 billion to $1.5 billion per child.
Prior Support: Gates has noted that his children received an exceptional upbringing, top-tier education, and financial support for their foundational opportunities.

The Reasoning

Independence: Gates believes that handing children massive, multi-billion-dollar fortunes does not do them any favors or help them build their own identities.