To Be Frank a waste of potential

“These old people don’t understand; this is how it works; you fake till you make it.”(ColdFusion and Altraide) This quote comes from disgraced Frank CEO Charlie Javice who tried and failed to defraud JP Morgan bank. Unlike the Elizabeth Holmes Javice had a working product and that of her company Frank, it was meant to help streamline the FAFSA process for college students. Similar to Turbo Tax, you would send Frank any needed information for a FAFSA to Frank instead and they would do all the heavy lifting and would make sure you were not leaving any money on the table. I can speak from experience that filling out a FAFSA is very difficult and even though we fill it out every year it takes days to complete it as you need a lot of personal information. Her start was a very solid idea.

Charlie started Frank in 2016 and made the process complete, the only hiccup between 2016 and what we will get into later was when the Department of Education went to court about Charlie misleading users thinking she was with the government. The dispute was settled between the two parties and Charlie was allowed to continue but with proper notice. As time went on Javice made it to the 30 under 30 Forbes list in 2021 and was making appearances everywhere on the news. But it was after this that it went all downhill, in September 2021 Charlie decided she wanted to sell Frank and contacted JP Morgan as the two concluded their negotiations it was agreed that JP would buy Frank for $175 million and Charlie would be given a managing director job at JP.

Now the curtain falls back, JP was starting to integrate Frank into their systems and sent emails to the existing customers to let them know of any changes coming to the system and this was where JP was caught with their pants down. I will quote and article to explain what happened next “Javice told them she had more than four million clients and would have about 10 million by year's end, but it turned out there were only about 300,000 customers and a list verifying her outsized claim was largely bogus.”(Press). Not long after this Charlie and a conspirator were fired from JP and were being sued by the bank. It would later be found that Charlie and her conspirator Olivier Amar paid a college professor $18,000 to create customer bots to inflate Frank's user base and make it more appealing to JP. The professor was also found and fired from his job as well. As the lawsuit between the two raged in 2023 Manhattan federal court charged Javice with one count of securities fraud, one count of wire fraud, one count bank fraud, and conspiracy. Charlie was well aware of what she was doing and even stated to a co-worker who knew what she was doing that “no one will end up in an orange jumpsuit”(ColdFusion and Altraide). Charlie’s trial concluded earlier this year and her verdict was rendered: she was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and also ordered to forfeit over $22 million in illegally obtained pay. The Charlie Javice story is another case of having a good idea but biome blinded by the stardom and the riches that come with it.

ColdFusion, and Dagogo Altraide. “How This 31 Year Old Woman Scammed JP Morgan.” YouTube, 11 May 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfdj3AfDD74. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Press, The Associated. “Startup Founder Convicted of Defrauding JPMorgan Chase of $175M by Faking Firm’s Success.” NPR, 29 Mar. 2025, www.npr.org/2025/03/29/nx-s1-5344434/charlie-javice-convicted-defrauding-jpmorgan. Accessed 12 Oct. 2025.