A data scientist who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School allegedly played a key role in tricking America’s biggest bank into investing massive amounts of money in a company that turned out to be a fraud.
In 2016, 24-year-old Charlie Javice founded a financial aid assistance company called “Frank” and ultimately convinced JPMorgan Chase to buy it for $175 million in 2021.
JPMorgan also appointed her as a managing director of the bank after the deal – but Javice only lasted about a year at her new job before accusations of fraud got her fired.
In 2022, JPMorgan accused Javice of lying about how many users were on her app, and alleged that she had paid a friend $18,000 – double his hourly rate – to fabricate data in order to convince the bank to make its big investment, according to a Bloomberg report.
That friend, data scientist and Queens College professor Adam Kapelner, testified at Javice’s fraud trial in Manhattan federal court this week. The two had met while both were studying at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Kapelner told the court that Javice sent him a computer file showing Frank had less than 300,000 real users; he subsequently spent about 22 hours on the project adding 4,265,085 lines of code representing fake users.
Kapelner said he never knew what the data was being used for.
Said Kapelner,
“I asked the purpose of the project, and she said she couldn’t talk about it.”
Once she was working at JPMorgan, Javice then hired Kapelner to integrate customer data she’d procured from another marketing company into Frank’s database. According to prosecutors, this move was to cover up her tracks with new data.
Javice – now 32 – is being charged securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy, and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
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