Forbes Honoree Ordered to Spend Her Own Revenue Figures Behind Bars, Court Rules Her Accounting Had Simply Been Too Ambitious

A founder named to a Forbes 30 Under 30 list has been sentenced to 25 months in prison after prosecutors said she maintained two parallel sets of books while raising millions for her rewards platform. Under the terms of the sentence, she has been assigned to a federal facility where she will begin each morning by counting her revenue in both ledgers, aloud, in front of a guard.

Investigators said the first ledger showed a company growing faster than any loyalty program in the state, and the second recorded the company as it actually was. Prosecutors told the court that reconciling the two required a dedicated room on the company's ninth floor, which staff nicknamed the Second Room, and which had its own coffee machine and its own chairs for the investors who were shown only the first ledger. The prison has since installed a matching room for her, with the same chairs.

Court officials confirmed that the sentence includes a condition requiring the founder to attend a monthly briefing on the difference between the two books, delivered by the same accountants who prepared them. A spokesperson for the court described the arrangement as « proportionate to the size of the discrepancy » and declined to say whether the accountants had been offered the same sentence.

Prosecutors have also asked that every rewards point ever issued by the platform be physically tallied by hand in the courthouse basement before the case closes, a task that court clerks estimate will take until next spring. Several former employees have volunteered to assist. The honoree, according to her lawyer, has asked for a pen with a second cap.

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