Shopify—Shopify's commission structure incentivized sales staff to inflate revenue projections, prompting fraud probe and CRO/COO departures
An internal fraud probe that began around mid-2024 found Shopify's commission-on-projections structure had incentivized sales staff to inflate revenue projections; the company fired implicated employees around June 2025. Chief Revenue Officer Bobby Morrison and COO Kaz Nejatian subsequently departed amid the fallout, reported by The Logic and the Globe and Mail on November 24, 2025. This is a distinct, earlier event from Shopify's separate January-2026 Partnerships/Revenue Operations layoffs, from which it was originally (incorrectly) bundled into a single incident record.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Governance | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.295 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (medium ×1) × confidence (0.59)× agency (negligent ×0.5)
Evidence (1 signal)
The Logic/Globe and Mail: Shopify's commission structure incentivized sales staff to inflate revenue projections; CRO and COO departed amid fraud probe
An exclusive investigative report by The Logic (corroborated by the Globe and Mail) found Shopify's internal fraud investigation began after management noticed discrepancies between projected and actual merchant revenue starting mid-2024. A small number of salespeople had systematically inflated the value of deals to boost commissions, exploiting a commission structure that paid on projected rather than realized annual sales. A sales team was fired in June 2025 after COO Kaz Nejatian gave an ultimatum to confess to falsified numbers. Chief Revenue Officer Bobby Morrison, who had implemented the commission structure that enabled the fraud, departed in early October 2025, along with two other executives he had hired. Shopify's Head of External Communications said the company 'immediately investigated, fired them, and strengthened our systems,' adding it had 'no impact on our financials and the issue is closed,' though sources told The Logic the shortfall in projected-but-unrealized revenue was in the tens of millions of dollars.