
Charlie Javice, the former Forbes "30 Under 30" founder, was convicted Friday of defrauding
Javice sold her student-aid startup, Frank, to
Prosecutors alleged over a six-week trial that Javice and co-defendant Olivier Amar, former Frank chief growth officer, fabricated customer data to falsely inflate Frank's value prior to the sale, reporting the startup had 4.2 million customers when the actual number was closer to 300,000.
A federal court found Javice guilty on three counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud. The jury deliberated for about six hours.
The conviction carries the possibility of up to three decades in prison; the judge scheduled sentencing for late July. Amar was also found guilty Friday on all counts.
Frank was founded in 2017 as a fintech to alleviate the financial aid process for college students. It offered a tool to help college students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which is used by most colleges to determine the amount of financial aid a student receives. Javice, now 32, launched the startup after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
During the trial, lead prosecutor Rushmi Bhaskaran said Javice worked to acquire fake names and addresses to bolster the company's numbers in order to pass
"It was through their lies that they became multimillionaires," Bhaskaran said in the prosecution's opening statement.
Javice's lawyers throughout the trial argued the bank was aware of the actual numbers before completing the deal. Javice's attorney Jose Baez said in his opening statement that the lawsuit is "nothing more than buyer's remorse." Baez claimed that
Her attorneys also
Even before its acquisition by