Charlie Javice, 31, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for ‘falsely and dramatically inflating the number of customers of her company, Frank, to fraudulently induce JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) to acquire Frank for $175m (£130m)’, according to court papers.

Javice and her co-defendant, Olivier Amar, who was chief growth officer at Frank, were convicted of conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud, and securities fraud following a six-week jury trial in March 2025. 

Amanda Houle, attorney for the United States, said: ‘Javice perpetrated a $175m 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 $300m [£223m].

‘The 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.’

In 2017, Javice founded Frank, a for-profit company that offered an online platform designed to simplify the process of filling out the free application for federal student aid (FAFSA) applications for financial aid for college students. 

Four years later, Javice began to pursue the sale of Frank to a larger financial institution. Two major banks, one of which was J.P. Morgan Chase, expressed interest and began acquisition processes with Frank. 

During the trial, presided by US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, the court heard that Javice ‘represented repeatedly to those banks that Frank had 4.25 million customers or “users”, when it actually had ‘approximately 300,000 users’.

When JPMC sought to verify the number of Frank’s users and the amount of data collected about them, information that was critical to their decision to move forward with the acquisition, Javice and Amar fabricated a data set using an ‘artificially generated (‘synthetic’) data set. But Frank’s director of engineering raised concerns about the legality of the request and refused the request.

Javice then hired an outside data scientist to create the data set and gave it to an agreed-upon third-party vendor to demonstrate to JPMC that the data set had over 4.25 million rows. The data was duly handed over and passed the due diligence tests conducted by JPMC. When the $175m acquisition of Frank went ahead, both Javice and Amar were hired as part of the deal, as well as other Frank employees. Javice was paid $21m for selling her equity stake in Frank and a $20m retention bonus.

After the acquisition, JPMC employees asked for the customer data for a marketing campaign. In response, Javice provided what was supposedly Frank’s user data but it was the fraudulent data she and Amar had purchased on the open market, at a fraction of the price that JPMC paid to acquire Frank and its purported users.

In addition to the prison term, Javice of Miami Beach, Florida, was sentenced to three years of supervised release. The district court also imposed a forfeiture judgment of $22.3m (£16.6m) and ordered restitution in the amount of $287.5m (£213.9m) that is joint and several with Amar. 

Javice plans to appeal the sentence and the Judge said she could stay free on bail of $2m.

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