NEW YORK (AP) — Charlie Javice, the charismatic founder of a startup company that claimed to be revolutionizing the way college students apply for financial aid, was convicted on Friday of defrauding one of the largest U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase, out of $175 million by exaggerating her customer base by 10 times.
A jury in New York City returned its verdict after a five-week trial. Javice, 32, faces the possibility of a lengthy prison term.
Javice was in her mid-20s when she founded Frank, a company with software that promised to simplify the process of filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, a complex government form used by students to apply for aid for college or graduate school.
The company promoted itself as a way for financially needy students to obtain more aid faster, in return for a few hundred dollars in fees. Javice appeared regularly on cable news programs to boost Frank’s profile, once appearing on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list before JPMorgan bought the startup in 2021.
JPMorgan executives testified that she told them she had over four million clients and would have about 10 million by year’s end, but it turned out there were only about 300,000 customers.
Javice’s lawyer, Jose Baez, told the jury that JPMorgan knew what it was getting in the deal, and made up the fraud allegations due to buyer’s remorse after government regulatory changes made the data it received in the deal useless to its hopes of gaining new young customers.
