Javice Agrees to No JPMorgan Contact, Except About Her Mortgage

(Bloomberg) — Frank founder Charlie Javice, who is charged with defrauding JPMorgan Chase & Co. in its $175 million acquisition of her college finance site, asked to modify her bail terms so she can communicate with the bank about her mortgage.

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Javice, who was released on a $2 million bond, previously agreed not to contact any current JPMorgan employees, former Frank workers or other parties potentially involved in the case. But in a letter filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, her lawyers asked that she be allowed to contact particular bank workers as well as the customer service line about her home loan.

The JPMorgan contact would be “solely in her capacity as a mortgager and the institution’s capacity as a mortgage,” Javice’s lawyers said in the filing. They also said she has one remaining investment account at JPMorgan, for which “she may need to coordinate with the responsible bank employees to manage the account.”

Prosecutors were not opposed to the modification, Javice’s lawyers said. Her bail was secured in part by the equity in her Miami home.

“With these exceptions, the no-contact condition would be tailored more appropriately and would not unduly prevent Ms. Javice from managing her affairs as necessary.”

Javice, 31, founded Frank in 2017 to help college students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. According to the criminal complaint unsealed last week, she told JPMorgan, which acquired Frank in 2021, that the online platform had 4.25 million customers, when in reality that number was less than 300,000. Prosecutors claim Javice hired a data scientist to create a phony dataset to bolster her claim to JPMorgan.

JPMorgan sued Javice for fraud in December and shut Frank down in January. The bank has said she made $21 million from the deal. In civil court filings, she has accused JPMorgan of scapegoating her for its faulty due diligence and claimed the bank pushed her to create “synthetic data” on Frank users.

Javice was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud affecting a financial institution and bank fraud — each of which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison — as well as securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

The case is US v. Javice, 23-mag-02638; US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).