The Daily Beast left messages for Amar and one of his attorneys but did not receive an immediate response. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York did not respond to requests for comment. JPMorgan Chase declined to comment.
In a criminal complaint, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that Javice “engaged in a calculated scheme” in 2021 “to falsely and dramatically inflate the number of customers at her company” in order to persuade JPMorgan to buy her company. Once pitched as “an Amazon for higher education,” Frank’s investors included Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan.
Prosecutors say that Javice falsely told two major banks that Frank had 4.25 million users when the startup really only had 300,000 customers. To cover her tracks, the complaint alleges, Javice hired a data scientist to artificially generate user data. Javice received more than $21 million for selling her stake in Frank and under the terms of the deal was supposed to also be paid a $20 million retention bonus. The accusations in the criminal filings mirror those in a civil suit JPMorgan filed against Javice and Amar in December 2022., Javice and Amar’s startup began to get some press attention—and scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission for allegedly misleading consumers—in the years before the JPMorgan deal.
Amar and Javice are also facing a lawsuit filed by JPMorgan Chase in connection with the Frank merger. The suit—and subsequent criminal charges—sent shock waves throughout the financial technology community, still reeling from the epic falls of wunderkinds