Meet Charlie Javice, The Startup Founder Who Fooled JP Morgan

“There were definitely times where I painted a rosier picture than things truly were,” Frank’s founder and former CEO said months before JP Morgan bought her startup for $175 million.

In 2021, Charlie Javice, the young founder and former CEO of Frank, pulled off a master stroke: Selling her fintech startup to JP Morgan Chase for $175 million. “It’s not every day that an entrepreneur gets her fairytale new beginning (not ending!),” she wrote on LinkedIn at the time.

Just over a year later, JP Morgan’s chief executive Jamie Dimon is under fire for a due diligence process that appears to have missed what the bank now claims was a major red flag about Javice’s business: legions of fake customers. JP Morgan is suing Javice for allegedly tricking it into buying Frank—which promises to simplify the student financial aid application process—by creating a list of more than 4 million college-aged users that don’t exist.