Charlie Javice, the founder and CEO of Frank, was sentenced to 85 months in prison for fraudulently inflating the number of customers at her startup to induce J.P. Morgan Chase (JPMC) to acquire the company for $175 million. The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein following a six-week jury trial in March 2025, where Javice and co-defendant Olivier Amar were convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud, and securities fraud.
“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.”
According to public filings and trial records, Frank was founded in 2017 as an online platform intended to simplify filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Javice served as CEO while Amar held the position of Chief Growth Officer.
In 2021, Javice began seeking acquisition opportunities for Frank with major financial institutions including JPMC. She represented that Frank had 4.25 million users—defined as individuals with accounts containing at least four categories of personal data—when in reality there were only about 300,000 users.
When JPMC requested verification of these numbers before finalizing its acquisition decision, Javice and Amar fabricated a synthetic data set after their own director of engineering refused due to legal concerns. They then hired an outside data scientist to generate this false information and provided it via a third-party vendor as supposed evidence supporting their claims.
Based on these misrepresentations, JPMC proceeded with acquiring Frank for $175 million. As part of the agreement, Javice received over $21 million from selling her equity stake and was slated for an additional $20 million retention bonus.
Simultaneously with creating fake user data, Javice and Amar attempted to purchase real student data on the open market in order to further conceal their deception. They bought information on 4.5 million students for $105,000 but found it incomplete compared to what they claimed Frank maintained internally; they supplemented this by purchasing more data elsewhere.
After JPMC completed the acquisition and requested user information for marketing purposes, Javice supplied them with purchased datasets rather than authentic Frank customer records.
In addition to her prison term, Javice was sentenced to three years of supervised release. The court imposed a forfeiture judgment exceeding $22 million and ordered restitution totaling nearly $287.5 million jointly with Amar.
Attorney Amanda Houle commended Special Agents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and agents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s Office of Inspector General for their investigative efforts.
The prosecution was led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicholas W. Chiuchiolo, Micah F. Fergenson, and Georgia V. Kostopoulos from the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit.
