JOHNATHAN PAE — On Monday, April 3, Charlie Javice was finally arrested for defrauding mega company JPMorgan. Who exactly is Charlie Javice? She is a 31 year old who graduated from the Wharton School of Business. She is the founder and CEO of a start-up company, Frank, which helps with simplifying the process of student loan applications and is a “financial aid and scholarship tool.”
In 2019, two years after she founded Frank, she was listed in Forbes’ “30 under 30” issue. Two years beyond that, in 2021, JPMorgan Chase purchased the company for $175 million dollars under the impression that Frank had more than 4 million customers just as Javice reported. The reason why JPMorgan wanted to buy the company was because of the vast number of student contact information, which could open up the possibility of new, younger customers for the bank. However, a year later, law enforcement found out that Javis only had around 300,000 customers on Frank and that she hired a data science professor to create the enormous amounts of fake accounts. In fact, it is estimated that around 4.2 million of those so-called customers of Frank were fake. JPMorgan was able to figure this out when they sent out emails to around 400,000 students and 70% of these emails bounced right back. If Javice’s scam had worked out, she would have allegedly been making around $45 million. Additionally, Javice would have been a managing director of Frank after JPMorgan’s acquisition and would have been a managing partner at JPMorgan Chase.
Charlie Javice was fired in November of 2022 and currently is facing four counts: conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and securities fraud. Charlie has since denied these different allegations. Three of the charges each could possibly land Javice in prison for a maximum of 30 years. On Tuesday, April 4th, she went to a federal court in Manhattan and was released on a $2 million bond. In addition to her bond, travel restrictions were put in place: she is only allowed to travel between New York City and South Florida. Additionally, she agreed to have limited contact with people and is banned from talking to potential witnesses such as people who work at JPMorgan Chase or Frank. Finally, the court gave her a curfew that she must follow. Just a few weeks ago, on April 10th, Charlie Javis was seen out and about in Miami Beach.
One might wonder why so many people in the Forbes’ “30 under 30” list face jail.
One possible reason for this is due to the fact that the list controversially includes entrepreneurs particularly in tech and finance who have been convicted of crimes and served time in prison. Many critics believe that people with criminal records being on the list sends the wrong message to young entrepreneurs and also glamorizes unethical behavior. They also believe that by putting those who have been incarcerated on the list, undermines the credibility of the list due to the fact that it is unfair to those who have achieved success without breaking any laws. Forbes has continued to defend the decision to keep these people who have achieved significant success at a young age on the list regardless of past mistakes. Another larger concern outside of the specific case of Charlie Javice is the question of the extent to which criminal records affect a person’s opportunity for success; some say that their criminalization should not be held over the individual and others say that criminal record should be a factor considered for the suitability of certain positions.
The Dutch Report 