Phoebe Gates is 23 years old and swore she would never use her father’s last name to succeed.
Her startup Phia, an extension that promises to find the best discounts, allegedly charged commissions on sales it never generated, using a technique known as “cookie stuffing”.
According to Bloomberg, internal Slack messages show that Phoebe and her partner Sophia Kianni knew about the scheme since December 2025, seven months before it became public.
Attorney Ariel Givner explained that this practice is often treated as federal wire fraud in the United States, carrying a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in prison plus fines.
When the feature was disabled, Phia’s daily revenue fell from 80.000 to just 10.000 dollars. You decide whether it was a technical error or something much more calculated.