‘She’s the daughter of Bill Gates’: KIRO hosts say wealth and power are shielding Phoebe Gates from scrutiny

Phoebe Gates, the 23-year-old daughter of Bill and Melinda Gates, is facing scrutiny after Bloomberg reported that her shopping startup Phia used a practice known as “cookie stuffing” to claim affiliate commissions on sales it didn’t drive. Internal Slack messages showed co-founders Gates and Sophia Kianni were aware of the practice for at least seven months before publicly calling it a bug, according to Bloomberg.

But what frustrated KIRO fill-in hosts Angela Poe Russell and Jim Dever wasn’t just the alleged fraud. It was how little attention it’s getting.

“Bias is not just how you cover a story and how you report it — it’s who you choose to pay attention to and who you ignore,” Angela Poe Russell said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio.

Phia’s browser extension allegedly injected tracking cookies during checkout to claim referral credit for purchases shoppers made on their own through retailers like Nike and Nordstrom. After Bloomberg first contacted the company in July, Phia said it had only become aware of the issue “within the last 24 hours.” Bloomberg’s follow-up investigation, published Aug. 11, contradicted that claim, citing internal communications going back to December.

After the cookie-stuffing features were disabled, Phia’s average daily revenue dropped from $80,000 to between $10,000 and $28,000, according to Bloomberg. Affiliate network Impact.com has since suspended Phia from its marketplace.

Dever says Phoebe Gates could be facing federal crime

Dever said the practice isn’t a minor business dispute.

“This is not just a little oopsie,” Dever said. “This is actually a federal crime and could be punishable with up to 20 years in prison, though she’s more likely to face financial penalties.”

KIRO producer Joe Wallace said he doubts Gates will face serious consequences.

“I would be surprised if she faces anything beyond a financial penalty, and probably not even a big one,” Wallace said. “I don’t think she’ll face any jail time. If you work in finance, they can sometimes ban you from working in that particular field if you’re guilty of white-collar crimes. I doubt she even gets that.”

When Russell asked why, Wallace was blunt.

“Because she’s the daughter of Bill Gates, and they have an ungodly amount of wealth at their disposal,” Wallace said.

“And power,” Dever responded.

Russell calls out media double standards

Russell said the lack of media coverage is the bigger story. She pointed to past news cycles where public figures were scrutinized for weeks over comparatively minor issues.

“We spent weeks obsessing over vacation calendars,” Russell said. “There were weeks spent dissecting whether someone plagiarized a report for a professor in the UK. The media is just on it. And I’m like, this is the daughter of one of the wealthiest people in the world.”

Wallace said he hadn’t even heard of the story until it was brought up on the show days earlier.

“I do this for a living,” Wallace said. “When I did finally go looking for it, the first and most reputable place I found it was The New York Post.”

A ‘secret class’ at Stanford raises more questions

Dever also flagged a detail about Gates’ time at Stanford that added another layer to the conversation: a secretive, invitation-only course called “So You Think You Can Rule the World.”

“It was a handpicked group of 12 students,” Dever said. “They weren’t allowed to talk about it. Ten-week course, not publicized, no enrollment code. It was very secretive. It was definitely elitist. And these are people who were sort of pledged to look out for each other moving into the future.”

Russell noted the class’s founder said he wanted to be part of “gathering people who are passionate about leveraging systems of power.”

“I have to wonder,” Russell said. “Are you looking out for each other right now? Is this your way of kind of looking the other way because she’s …”

“She’s an alumna,” Wallace filled in.

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

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