Charlie Javice sentenced to 7 years in prison for fraudulent $175M sale of financial aid startup

Source: AP

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Updated 2:18 PM CDT, September 29, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — Charlie Javice, the founder of a startup company that sought to dramatically improve how students apply for financial aid, was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served.

Javice, 33, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court for her March conviction by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, who said she committed “a large fraud” by duping the bank giant in the summer of 2021. She made false records that made it seem the company, called Frank, had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000, Hellerstein found.

The judge said Javice had assembled a “very powerful list” of her charitable acts, which included organizing soup kitchens for the homeless when she was 7 years old and designing career programs for formerly incarcerated women.

In court papers, defense lawyers noted that Javice has faced extraordinary public scrutiny, reputational destruction and professional exile, “making her a household name” in the same way Elizabeth Holmes became synonymous with her blood-testing company, Theranos.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/charlie-javice-sentencing-fraud-jp-morgan-238cb9a218265f7fd9bea54b06eae9b7