A senior Nike executive resigned after a recent news report revealed that her son had used her corporate credit card to help his lucrative resale shoe business.
Ann Hebert, who worked at Nike for more than 25 years, was most recently the company’s vice president and general manager for North America. A spokesman told CBS News on Tuesday that Hebert has “made the decision to resign from Nike.”
Her 19-year-old son, Joe Herbert, told Bloomberg Businessweek about his operation to buy shipments of sneakers and flip them for higher profits. In one instance, he said he gathered more than 15 people to swarm a website that sold pairs of coveted Yeezy Boost 350 Zyon sneakers and then used bots to bypass a system designed to limit purchases to one pair per customer. He said he bought Yeezys for $ 132,000 with a credit card and resold them for a profit of $ 20,000.
To prove his business’s earnings, the teen sent a financial statement to a Bloomberg reporter for an American Express company card – bearing his mother’s name.
Last year, Ann Hebert was promoted to Nike’s Vice President and General Manager for North America, a move the company advanced as “instrumental in accelerating our Consumer Direct Offense.” The strategy would reduce reliance on brick-and-mortar stores and encourage customers to purchase sneakers through the app. As Bloomberg noted, the initiative “helped fuel the sneaker resale boom.”
However, a Nike spokesperson told Bloomberg that she disclosed relevant information about her son’s company in 2018 and Nike found no conflicts of interest. Her son also claimed she was “so high on Nike that she couldn’t do what he does anymore” and that he never received any inside information from her.
According to Bloomberg, Hebert has shared information about upcoming online releases with paid chat group subscribers. He claimed he had no prior knowledge; instead, he said his business acumen simply came from living in Portland, where Nike has its US offices.
“If you know the right people here, this is the city to sell shoes,” he told Bloomberg. The right people “can give you access to things that a normal person wouldn’t have access to.”
Hebert’s Instagram account features an image of hundreds of sneaker boxes, with some of the most sought-after pairs available.
CBS News reached out to the account for a comment, but did not immediately hear back.