By Barrabi
The 31-year-old founder of a college financial aid startup called Frank got slapped with criminal fraud charges on Tuesday on allegations that she used fake customer data to trick JPMorgan Chase into buying her firm for a whopping $175 million.
Charlie Javice, who was featured on the prestigious Forbes “30 under 30” list in finance in 2019, was arrested in New Jersey on Monday night and charged with multiple counts of fraud, the feds said on Tuesday.
Prosecutors allege that Javice repeatedly claimed Frank had 4.25 million users while in sale talks with JPMorgan Chase and another unnamed bank. However, the startup actually had data for less than 300,000 users, according to court papers.
When JPMorgan asked for proof of Frank’s user base, Javice allegedly paid “outside data scientist” $18,000 to create a fake customer list. The spoofed data allegedly helped to secure JPMorgan’s commitment to a deal.
“As alleged, Javice engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud JPMC in the course of a $175 million acquisition deal,” US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “She lied directly to JPMC and fabricated data to support those lies – all in order to make over $45 million from the sale of her company.”
Frank was founded in 2017 and touted as a tool that would help streamline the college financial aid application process for college students and their parents.
Javice received a $21 million payout for selling for an equity stake in Frank to JPMorgan and an additional $20 million in the form of a retention bonus, the feds said. Javice and other Frank employees were also given jobs at the bank.
The federal complaint alleged that Javice initially approached Frank’s director of engineering to create the fake data set. When the engineer pushed back on the request, Javice tried to reassure the employee that it was legal.
“We don’t want to end up in orange jumpsuits,” Javice said, according to the complaint.
JPMorgan realized the scam after it launched an email marketing campaign for individuals included on Frank’s purported list of customers that generated few responses.
Javice was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, one count of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and one count of securities fraud. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 or 30 years in prison.
The Frank founder also faces a set of civil charges from the SEC.
SEC enforcement chief Gurbir Grewal said Javice had engaged in an “old school fraud.”
“She lied about Frank’s success in helping millions of students navigate the college financial aid process by making up data to support her claims, and then used that fake information to induce JPMC to enter into a $175 million transaction,” Grewal said.
When reached for comment, a representative for Javice said she “denies the allegations.”
Javice’s attorney, Alex Spiro, and a JPMorgan representative declined to comment.
JPMorgan formally shut down Frank in January – with CEO Jamie Dimon decrying the bank’s acquisition of the startup as a “huge mistake.”
JPMorgan filed suit against Javice in December with allegations similar to those detailed in the criminal and civil cases.
Javice countersued, alleging that she was fired last November from her post as head of student solutions so that JPMorgan could avoid paying out the $20 million bonus.
At the time, her attorney, Spiro, described the allegations laid out in JPMorgan’s lawsuit as “nothing but a cover.”
“After JPM rushed to acquire Charlie’s rocketship business, JPM realized they couldn’t work around existing student privacy laws, committed misconduct, and then tried to retrade the deal,” Spiro told in a January email.
“Charlie blew the whistle and then sued.”
JPMorgan fired back, telling that Javice “was not and is not a whistleblower.”
Spiro is best known for representing Elon Musk during his legal battle over the acquisition of Twitter.
