Who is Frank’s Charlie Javice, the startup founder being sued by JPMorgan?

For those who need a refresher, Javice in 2017 founded Frank, a startup that intended to revamp the financial aid process for students. The company was acquired by JPMorgan for $175 million in 2021. But the bank sued Javice earlier this year, alleging she fabricated user numbers before the acquisition, claiming 4.25 million customers when the company only had about 300,000. Javice has denied the allegations and claimed it was the bank that made mistakes during the deal’s diligence. (Javice declined to talk to Luisa for her story.)

Through these legal battles, Javice has remained a bit of a mystery. So Luisa set out to answer a few questions: “How does a bright and ambitious and totally driven individual end up accused of fraud and hauled into jail for the night? How does someone who has strived their whole life to ‘make it’ end up in such legal peril?”

Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Luisa spoke to dozens of people who have known Javice to paint a complete portrait of an ambitious founder driven to succeed at all costs. Javice grew up in the suburbs of New York. Her father worked in alternative asset management. Classmates remember her as quiet and studious—a “normal” teen. She built her first startup in high school, a platform to help students launch microfinance clubs.

Then, she attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she continued to focus on entrepreneurship. One classmate recalls that she seemed to aim to “get boxes checked” on her résumé and didn’t spend much time on learning for learning’s sake or on her personal life. She landed a spot as a finalist for a Thiel Fellowship, the $100,000 grant for entrepreneurs under 22, who generally drop out of college to participate.

After her 2013 graduation from Wharton, she pivoted to the business that became Frank.

The rest of Luisa’s story outlines the chain of events that led to a dramatic fall and a legal battle with one of the biggest banks in the U.S. I hope you’ll read it in full here.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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ON MY RADAR

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PARTING WORDS

“I think gay people are very lucky, because we are not conventional, we are a group slightly apart. It gives us an edge. We’re good artists, we’re good musicians. And I like being gay. I wouldn’t want to be straight for anything.”

—British-Australian actor Miriam Margolyes