Charlie Javice: The girl who outwitted JP Morgan into procuring her $175 million startup

Charlie Javice is an exceptionally young individual. She has passed multiple boundaries relatively to the ones her age. She went to become a buzzing entrepreneur. Composed but passionate, Javice was determined in making a change through her startup Frank.

The new concept would enable students to make better and more informed decisions pertaining to their student loans by facilitating them with the right guidance and loan opportunities.

The startup was pitched with a pertinacity of offering financial aid and debt. It wasn’t long before Charlie got surrounded by the spotlight, by the media, and investors to make her idea a reality. Being featured on the prestigious Forbes’s 30 under 30 section, the young entrepreneur was making waves.

In the corporate world, the financial technology brand Frank was dubbed as “The Amazon for higher education”. Things started turning real gold for her when in 2021, she was approached by the executives of JP Morgan Chase, the biggest bank of the US and the fifth largest in the world with approximately $3.3 trillion assets in value.

Young Charlie Javice wanted to increase Frank’s value. So, when she got the wind of JP Morgan’s interest into her venture, she started devising plans she had no idea would conclude in severe consequence.

Hellbent on selling it big, the young American approached a data scientist professor and paid him $18,000 for creating up to 4 million fake customer accounts of Frank.
In the 2021, a phenomenal transaction of $175 million made its way in Charlie’s account from JP Morgan Chase.

She had successfully convinced the biggest bank into believing that acquiring Frank would be a big deal given its 4 million plus customer base, that was fake.

No one could have figured it out the discrepancies and the faults that were prevailing in this paramount deal. For some reason, the shrewd businessman miserably failed in doing their homework better before making the final purchase call.

Once the Forbes’s under 30 star was uncovered along with her machinations, the public and the critics begin to brutely question the expertise and the experience of JP Morgan’s officials and representatives of letting such a major check slip pass.

It didn’t take long for the public to become skeptical of the practices preached and executed by the America’s biggest bank. A commercial entity known for smart investing and safeguarding investor’s money, that pays the CEO around $34 million annual pay is less likely to in a scenario of being accused of such intensified blunder.

Till now, everyone has been aggravated with the behavior of JP Morgan executives. That how could they have been deceived into believing that Frank startup had 4 million accounts while in reality, it was less than 300,000

An interesting question is, after fixing the acquiring deal of Frank, how did the bank discovered that they have been fooled?

Here’s how it all happened,

The employees at the bank were quick to notice the peculiarity of Frank. They started doubting after figuring out the exact number of subscribed customers list, which was exactly as that of an MS excel sheet: 1,048,576 rows to be precise.

Speculations started to kick off. It was finally confirmed that the accounts were fake after a marketing campaign was initiated and nearly all the emails were bounced back.
After knowing this, the banks decided to immediately shut down the site and sued the entrepreneur they had acquired the venture from.

That’s not all, after raising allegations and the conducting of investigation by the SEC (Security Exchange Commision) , it has been unveiled that Charlie Javice had received a significant portion of the $175 million acquirement deal through trust and through stocks.

This was a strategy to picture the entrepreneur scot-free from paying any taxes
She was also given $20 million in the form of a huge retention signing bonus as the newest employee of JP Morgan Chase.

Strangely this is not the first story of a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur making their way into court and jail. There have been some before accused of similar actions by the corporations they tried to struck a deal with.

But those are stories for another day. Stay tuned for more.