Cookie stuffing already sent two men to federal prison. Shawn Hogan made $28 million as eBay's #1 affiliate before the FBI raided his home. Brian Dunning, the #2, took in $5.2 million. Both pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) August 13, 2026
Now leaked Slack messages show Phoebe Gates' startup ran… https://t.co/sjGx3folOP
Cookie stuffing already sent two men to federal prison. Shawn Hogan made $28 million as eBay's #1 affiliate before the FBI raided his home. Brian Dunning, the #2, took in $5.2 million. Both pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Now leaked Slack messages show Phoebe Gates' startup ran the same playbook, and the founders knew.
Here's what Phia's extension did. During checkout it opened a background tab and inserted its own referral code, claiming commission on sales it never drove, sometimes overriding the affiliate who actually earned it. Nike and Nordstrom were among the retailers hit.
When Bloomberg first reported it in July, Phia called it a bug and said the company had just learned of it. The new leaks show Gates and Kianni discussing the practice with engineers back in December. Seven months earlier. And per Bloomberg, the code was a deliberately built feature with a toggle.
Bugs don't ship with on/off switches.
The wildest thread runs through one man. In 2006, eBay hired a fraud researcher named Ben Edelman to run compliance checks on affiliates suspected of cookie stuffing, the cases that became the Hogan and Dunning prosecutions. In 2026, the researcher who reviewed Phia's code and concluded it was designed to claim unearned commissions? Ben Edelman. Same investigator, same scheme, 20 years apart.
The eBay cases are also why the 20-year max is real. Prosecutors argued the cookies themselves, transmitted across state lines, constituted the wire fraud. That theory won, and it turned cookie stuffing into a federal crime.
Hogan got 5 months. Dunning got 15. Both were first offenses.
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