Charlie Javice’s high-profile fraud trial has become a showcase of embarrassing missteps on both sides, with eyebrow-raising details about how JPMorgan Chase was allegedly deceived into buying her startup, Frank, for $175 million when it had just 300,000 customers instead of four million.
Per a new WSJ article, one pivotal moment came when former Frank engineer Patrick Vovor testified that he refused Javice’s request to create fake user data just one week before the sale, recalling she said to him: “Don’t worry. I don’t want to end up in an orange jumpsuit.” When Vovor declined, Javice allegedly turned to a math professor to generate synthetic user data, which was then submitted to JPMorgan. (In court, Javice’s legal team painted Vovor as a scorned suitor.)
In addition to JPMorgan’s failure to properly vet Frank’s user base, other uncomfortable details have been surfaced, including that Leslie Wims Morris, who led the deal at JPMorgan, reportedly sent a note to her team, underlining segments from CEO Jamie Dimon’s annual letter to investors in 2021 and adding that sometimes “there’s no need to do analysis at all.”
Javice’s attorneys said in court that it’s evidence JPMorgan didn’t think it needed to check its work, but Morris testified that it was tongue-in-cheek and written as “a joke to my team.”