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Business|Charlie Javice Found Guilty of Defrauding JPMorgan in $175 Million Acquisition
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/business/charlie-javice-jpmorgan-guilty.html
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Federal prosecutors convinced a jury that Ms. Javice faked much of her customer list before selling her start-up, Frank, to the bank.
By Ron Lieber
Ron Lieber chronicled Charlie Javice’s backstory in 2023.
March 28, 2025, 3:07 p.m. ET
Charlie Javice, who made big headlines in 2023 when JPMorgan Chase accused her of faking her start-up’s customer list, was found guilty in federal court Friday of fraud.
She now faces the possibility of decades in prison.
The bank has its own civil lawsuit on standby, as it attempts to claw back her share of the $175 million it paid for her company, Frank. It sued her three years ago, and Ms. Javice was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport not long after that.
Frank, which was founded in 2016, aimed to help customers fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid at a time when the FAFSA was notoriously complicated. Ms. Javice, 32, quickly became a go-to quote for journalists writing about paying for college and turned up on lists of under-30 and under-40 up-and-comers.
Not long after Ms. Javice sold Frank to JPMorgan, there was trouble. The bank ran a test of Frank’s customer list, hoping to persuade its young customers to open Chase accounts. Of 400,000 outbound emails, just 28 percent arrived successfully in an inbox.
At trial, a bank executive said that it had opened just 10 accounts via the Frank list. It was, as the bank put it in its own legal filing, “disastrous.”
An internal investigation ensued, and the bank claimed to have found evidence that Ms. Javice and Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth and acquisition officer, had faked much of its customer list. JPMorgan sued her, and the federal government followed with its own charges, which resulted in Friday’s verdict.
