 "Charlie Javice exits, following her guilty verdict in a criminal trial on charges of defrauding JPMorgan Chase & Co, at Manhattan federal court in New York City, US, March 28, 2025. File Image/Reuters")
Charlie Javice once represented the face of youthful ambition in America’s startup ecosystem.
As a teenager, she was already pitching projects to investors, and by her mid-20s, she had launched companies that earned her recognition in entrepreneurial circles.
But the same qualities that helped her rise — confidence, ambition, and the willingness to push boundaries — ultimately fuelled one of the most high-profile fraud cases in recent Wall Street history.
On Monday, the 33-year-old entrepreneur was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison after a jury found her guilty of defrauding JPMorgan Chase in its $175 million acquisition of her company, Frank, a startup that promised to make the college financial aid process easier for millions of students.
What began as a celebrated success story has ended in a criminal conviction that prosecutors say reflects a troubling pattern in the world of venture-backed startups: founders misrepresenting their companies to secure massive paydays.
What we know about Charlie Javice
Charlie Javice was born on March 14, 1993, and raised in Westchester County, New York. She comes from a French-Jewish family; her father worked in finance at a hedge fund, while her mother transitioned from a teaching career to working as a life coach.
Javice attended the French-American School of New York, a bilingual private institution, before enrolling at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
She graduated in 2013 with a degree in finance and legal studies, completing her coursework in just three years.
Even before her university years, Javice was deeply involved in entrepreneurial initiatives. At 17, she launched PoverUp, a platform designed to help students set up microfinance clubs and learn about global development.
She quickly drew attention from professionals in New York’s startup circles.
Attorney Howard Finkelstein, who met her at the time, was struck by her ability to engage with people despite her youth. “She could start conversations with anyone and continue endlessly,” he recalled while speaking to Fortune.
Javice also spoke of her desire to launch an organisation that could combat global poverty, leading Finkelstein to remark, “Yeah, she wanted to change the world.”
Her drive extended into her time at Penn, where she joined the board of overseers for the university’s Hillel organisation.
By her sophomore year, she was already looking at new ways to influence large-scale issues, eventually shifting her attention toward student loans and financial aid.
How Javice built Frank
In 2016, Javice founded Frank, a company positioned as a solution to simplify the often-confusing Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
The company promised to guide students through the process more efficiently, helping them access scholarships and loans.
Its online system was marketed as the financial aid equivalent of tax-preparation software, offering students a way to maximise funding opportunities without the bureaucratic hassle.
Frank quickly earned media attention. Javice promoted the company on television and in publications, framing herself as an advocate for students navigating a broken system.
The startup charged modest fees for its services, claiming to support financially vulnerable students in securing the aid they needed to attend college.
The company also attracted venture capital. Among its backers was Israeli investor Michael Eisenberg, who had previously invested in high-growth technology companies.
By 2021, Frank had built enough of a profile to capture the attention of JPMorgan Chase, which was eager to expand its footprint in financial services for younger consumers.
But behind the public-facing success story, questions about Frank had been emerging for years.
How Javice got embroiled in controversies and lawsuits
Frank’s operations were not free from regulatory scrutiny. In 2017, the US Department of Education raised concerns that the company’s branding misled students into believing it was affiliated with the federal government.
Frank had originally operated under the domain frankfafsa.com, a name that regulators said risked confusing users. The company was forced to change its website to frank.com in 2018 after reaching a settlement with the Department.
Legal disputes also followed. In 2018, co-founder Adi Omesy sued Javice in Israel, alleging wage theft and misconduct.
The case dragged on for several years, and in 2021, Javice was ordered by a court to pay $35,000. These challenges, however, did not significantly slow down her ascent in the business world.
Despite mounting controversies, Javice’s personal brand continued to grow. In 2022, Forbes included her on its 30 Under 30 list, a recognition meant to highlight rising innovators.
But when her fraud case came to light later that year, Forbes would retract its praise, placing her in its so-called Hall of Shame as one of the magazine’s “regrettable picks.”
What happened with the JPMorgan deal
In September 2021, JPMorgan Chase announced it was buying Frank for $175 million. For JPMorgan, the acquisition promised access to millions of young customers who could be introduced to the bank’s suite of products.
Javice was appointed a managing director at JPMorgan following the deal, tasked with building out student-focused services at Chase.
But the promise unravelled almost immediately. Soon after acquiring Frank, JPMorgan’s marketing teams began running email campaigns aimed at Frank’s supposed customer base, only to find dismal engagement rates.
This discrepancy prompted internal questions about whether the user data provided by Frank was authentic.
According to prosecutors, Javice had grossly exaggerated the size of Frank’s user base. While she claimed the platform had more than 4 million students, the real number was closer to 300,000.
To back up the inflated figures, Javice allegedly hired a data scientist for $18,000 to fabricate a synthetic list of student accounts. Prosecutors later described this move as central to her deception.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon would later call the purchase a “huge mistake,” acknowledging that the bank had failed to adequately vet the acquisition.
How Javice was brought to book
By late 2022, JPMorgan filed a lawsuit against Javice, accusing her of fraud.
She countered with her own lawsuit, claiming she was being scapegoated for the bank’s failure to perform due diligence. But the counterattack did little to shield her.
In April 2023, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged her with securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy.
That same day, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed parallel charges. She was released on a $2 million bond, restricted to travel in New York City and southern Florida, and barred from contacting witnesses.
The indictment accused Javice of deliberately manipulating figures to secure a windfall for herself and her co-defendant Olivier Amar, Frank’s chief growth officer.
Prosecutors alleged that together they pitched Frank as a company with far greater reach than it truly had, securing themselves multimillion-dollar payouts in the process.
What happened at Javice’s trial
Javice’s trial began in February in Manhattan federal court. Over six weeks, prosecutors presented evidence that she knowingly misled JPMorgan with fabricated user data.
They argued that her scheme amounted to nothing more than selling “$175 million worth of lies.”
Nicholas Chiuchiolo, one of the prosecutors, told the jury that JPMorgan had not purchased a thriving startup but instead received “a spreadsheet with fake names.”
Another prosecutor, Micah Fergenson, highlighted the scale of the deception, declaring, “They acquired a crime scene.”
Javice’s defence, led by attorney Ronald Sullivan, argued that her company had a functioning product and that JPMorgan’s rushed acquisition process was partly to blame.
Sullivan contrasted her case with that of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, saying, “What she created actually worked, unlike Holmes, who did not have a real company.”
He maintained that JPMorgan pursued the deal aggressively out of fear that another bank would buy Frank first.
The jury was unconvinced.
On March 28, 2025, Javice and Amar were both convicted on all counts.
On September 30, 2025, Judge Alvin Hellerstein sentenced Javice to 85 months — just over seven years — in federal prison.
During the sentencing hearing, Hellerstein described her crime as “biblical,” citing religious commandments against dishonest measures. He rejected arguments for leniency, including her lawyer’s claim that she had been outmatched by “300 investment bankers from the largest bank in the world.”
At the hearing, Javice addressed the court in a tearful statement.
“At 28 I did something that runs against the grain of my upbringing,” she said. “I made choices that I will spend my entire life regretting.”
She added that she was “haunted that my failure has transformed something meaningful into something infamous.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said she was motivated by greed, pointing out that she personally stood to gain nearly $29 million from the deal.
They also cited a text she sent in 2022 mocking the sentence given to Elizabeth Holmes, in which she called it “ridiculous” that Holmes had received more than 11 years.
Notably, both women were celebrated as young disruptors who claimed to be revolutionising their industries, only to face prison sentences for fraud.
Hellerstein acknowledged that JPMorgan bore responsibility for failing to thoroughly review the acquisition but made clear his sentence was about her conduct.
“I am punishing her conduct and not JPMorgan’s stupidity,” he remarked.
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In the months between her conviction and sentencing, Javice lived in southern Florida, working as a Pilates instructor while awaiting judgment.
Her attorneys argued that requiring her to wear an ankle monitor interfered with her teaching, but the judge dismissed the objection, citing concerns about flight risk.
One of Javice’s high school classmates, reflecting on the outcome, put it bluntly, speaking to Fortune, “How can she think she could get away with this? How did she even sleep?”
With inputs from agencies