Jay Clayton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York | Department of Justice
Charlie Javice, the founder and former CEO of the financial aid startup Frank, was sentenced to 85 months in prison after being convicted of defrauding J.P. Morgan Chase (JPMC) in a $175 million acquisition deal. The sentencing took place before U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein following a six-week jury trial that concluded in March 2025.
Javice and her co-defendant, Olivier Amar, were found guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud, and securities fraud for misrepresenting the number of users on Frank’s platform to induce JPMC to purchase the company. According to prosecutors, Javice claimed that Frank had 4.25 million users when it actually had about 300,000.
“Javice perpetrated a $175 million fraud—repeatedly lying about the success of her startup company and even hiring a data scientist to create fake data to back up her lies. For that, Javice has been sentenced to 85 months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay over $300,000,000,” said Attorney for the United States Amanda Houle. “Today’s sentence sends a clear message that brazen frauds will be met with serious penalties. Our Office will continue to work tirelessly to hold accountable those who seek to profit through fraudulent schemes and lies.”
The court record shows that when JPMC requested verification of user numbers during acquisition discussions in 2021, Javice and Amar fabricated data sets intended to show millions more users than actually existed. After an internal engineering director refused their request due to legal concerns, Javice hired an outside data scientist to create synthetic user information.
In addition to providing these falsified records via a third-party vendor as part of due diligence processes with JPMC, Javice and Amar also bought real but incomplete student data from open market sources in an attempt to further cover up their misrepresentations.
After the sale closed and JPMC sought access for marketing purposes, Javice supplied this purchased data instead of genuine Frank user information.
Javice received over $21 million from selling her equity stake in Frank as part of the deal and was slated for an additional $20 million retention bonus.
Alongside her prison term, Javice was sentenced to three years of supervised release. The court imposed a forfeiture judgment exceeding $22 million and ordered restitution jointly with Amar totaling nearly $287.5 million.
Attorney Amanda Houle commended Special Agents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and investigators from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Inspector General for their work on this case.
The prosecution was managed by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicholas W. Chiuchiolo, Micah F. Fergenson, and Georgia V. Kostopoulos from the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit.
