NEW YORK: Former tech entrepreneur Charlie Javice, once hailed as a rising star in fintech, has been convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase out of Rs 14,577 crore by grossly inflating her startup’s customer base.
The verdict, delivered after a five-week trial in Manhattan federal court, has drawn comparisons to the Elizabeth Holmes-Theranos scandal, highlighting another meteoric rise and fall in the tech world.
Javice, 32, and her co-defendant Olivier Amar, who served as the chief growth and acquisition officer at her startup Frank, now face the possibility of decades behind bars. Both were convicted on four counts, including conspiracy, bank fraud, and wire fraud, each carrying a potential sentence of up to 30 years in prison.
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Javice founded Frank in her mid-20s, marketing it as a game-changer for students struggling with the complex Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) process. The platform promised to simplify financial aid applications, allegedly helping millions of students secure funding faster.
By 2021, Frank had caught the attention of JPMorgan Chase, which saw an opportunity to acquire a young customer base through the startup. Javice claimed to have over 4 million users, a number that allegedly grew to 10 million by year’s end. However, an internal probe later revealed the actual user count was closer to 300,000, and much of the customer data provided to JPMorgan was fabricated.
Prosecutors revealed that when JPMorgan requested user data verification, Javice and Amar allegedly scrambled to create millions of fake customer identities. Testimony from Frank’s chief software engineer, Patrick Vovor, revealed that Javice asked him to generate synthetic data to back up her claims.
“I told them I would not do anything illegal,” Vovor testified, adding that Javice and Amar even joked about avoiding orange prison jumpsuits. Instead, Javice allegedly paid a college friend Rs 14.98 lakh to produce a fabricated list of millions of names with detailed personal information.
Javice’s attorney, Jose Baez, argued that JPMorgan was fully aware of the numbers before the acquisition, but later turned on Javice due to buyer’s remorse when regulatory changes diminished the startup’s value. The defense has requested the verdict be overturned, with a hearing set for next week.
Meanwhile, a separate legal battle is brewing over whether Javice and Amar must wear ankle monitors as they await sentencing on July 23. Javice’s attorneys claim the device would interfere with her new career—teaching Pilates classes for several hours a day.
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Javice, who had once graced Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list, was free on Rs 16.6 crore bail following her 2023 arrest. Now, her conviction cements her place among disgraced tech executives whose ambitious visions crumbled under the weight of deception.
“Javice and Amar thought they could lie and cheat their way to a massive payday, but today, their lies caught up with them,” said Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Matthew Podolsky in a statement.
As sentencing looms, Javice’s once-promising future in fintech has turned into a cautionary tale of ambition, fraud, and the high-stakes world of startup deception.