When the Pitch Is a Lie

The Charlie Javice Case and the Real Cost of Fake Data

Charlie Javice, the founder of Frank—a college financial aid startup—has been convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase. She sold her company to the bank in 2021 for $175 million. But the numbers she used to close the deal weren’t real.

Javice claimed her platform had over 4 million users. In reality, she only had about 300,000. She allegedly created a fake…