The Wild Story of Charlie Javice’s $60M Legal Tab

How Charlie Javis fooled J.P. morgan and kept sending the bill. According to the New York Times, Charlie Javis, who is a woman, didn't just fake a company. She turned JP Morgan into her paying customer and then into her paying defendant. Back in 2021, Javice sold her startup, it's called Frank. She sold it to JP Morgan for $175 million. She told the bank her platform had helped over 4 million students with financial aid forms. Hey, this sounds like a great business for a bank, right? Well, prosecutors said that was a lie. In reality, Frank had data on only a teeny tiny sliver of that number. To close the deal, she allegedly hired a data expert to manufacture a bogus, massive, bogus customer list so it looked like millions of real users were on the platform. Now, that fraud got her convicted and and sentenced to more than seven years in prison. But here's the twist. Ron Lieber reports. She's rung up over $60 million in legal bills, including luxury hotel upgrades and pricey meals. And she sent the receipts to JP Morgan, which has already shelled out about $115 million for her defense and that of a co defendant. Because they at this point had bought her, they were liable, so they had to pay her legal bills. So what's the real message here? Charlie Gervais has shown that the world is not just filled with shameless men who will say anything and do anything, tell big stories and get away with it. Women can do it too, as Charlie Javis proved by committing massive fraud in the first place and then spending millions of dollars or more and sending it back to the bank that she defrauded in the first place. She. She's a world class con artist. Let's dig a little deeper here. Obviously, I don't condone this sort of activity. This is awful. But there's a part of me that is a little bit impressed that this person could just get away with saying such outlandish stories, then felt absolutely no shame whatsoever, continued to live like a multi, multi, multi millionaire or centimillionaire, sending her tab to, to the very people she ripped off and defrauded in the first place. I mean, that is first class gall. That is the sort of attitude that either gets you a 50 year prison sentence or an eight year term in the White House. I don't know which. But something tells me what she could be. The. The jealous, the Jordan Belford Wolf of Wall street for women. And the idea of just spinning out of whole cloth, absolute fraud. Now there's obviously something psychotic about that, to just think you can fool people, steal their money, not get caught. And it's just very rare to see this in women. True. Elizabeth Holmes. You can make that case with what she did on Wall Street. But by and large, when you think, be honest now, close your eyes and someone says fraud. Someone says massive fraud. Someone says stealing hundreds of millions of dollars in a bank. And then someone says, then running up a $60 million tab and sticking it to the first person they defrauded. If you close your eyes, what do you see? What's the image of that criminal? It doesn't typically look like a young woman in her 30s. So maybe that's why JP Morgan didn't give her as much scrutiny. I don't know. Someone at JP Morgan failed. It was an epic, unmitigated disaster to let this business get through their due diligence. I mean, at some point, if you're about to spit, it's one thing if you're doing a. A small friends and family angel investing round, you're putting $5,000 in to support someone who seems like they have a good idea. But we're talking about $175 million. Even to a big bank, that's real money. You would think that they would have had someone really go through and maybe write a call or reach out to 1 out of 50 customers to say, hey, is this real? What do you think of this bank? Or what do you think of this app? It's supposed to help people. It sure seems like they didn't do that. Now, I don't know how many heads rolled at JP Morgan, but certainly some of them should have. And, you know, it's pretty hard to make people feel sympathy for a bank in general, specifically JP Morgan, which is one of the biggest, richest banks in the world. But this has done that. This actually makes me feel sorry for JP Morgan that they got defrauded in the first place. But because they owned her, they now have to pay her legal defense fees, and she's just running up the tab and living the high life. Now, there's a part of me that says, I really wish she does get sent away to prison. But there's a part of me that worries she'll be the next Adam Newman. She'll be the person that someone like Marc Andreessen will say, or some, you know, far right libertarian venture capitalist billionaire will say, hey, this is the sort of person who's learned from experience and learned from failures and thinks big and is a good storyteller and has gone on a big journey. So let's just give her another $50 million for her next startup. I could easily see that. And I don't think it's a good thing, but I could see that happen. So what's the real lesson for you and me? It's not that. Hey, she got away with it. I could too. I think the real lesson is you don't want to have to worry about prison. I know I don't. Live ethically, live honestly, don't fake your numbers. And you won't get in this situation. Maybe no one will offer you $175 million for your business, but you can start sleep well at night, you can have a good conscious. And you know what? You can still make a nice living. We don't all have to make $175 million. Fascinating story.