Forbes did it again.

It's officially the Jim Cramer of Media.

Frank founder Charlie Javice was just found guilty of defrauding JPMorgan of $175M 😳 It's the craziest FinTech scam since FTX. Here's the wild story:

Financial Technology startup Frank was launched in 2016 as a financial platform that helps college students manage their financial aid and student debt.

Frank founder Charlie Javice had a lofty goal to build the startup into “an Amazon for higher education”.

A proud member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, Javice once said that her biggest challenge at Frank was scale. So she made it up!

She first asked a top engineer at Frank to make the fake customer list. When he said no, Javice approached a data science professor to help. Using data from some individuals who'd already started using Frank, he created 4 million fake customer accounts for which Javice paid him $18,000.

This looked like the next big thing, so banking giant JPMorgan was keen to acquire it. Turns out, they paid $175 million for a lie.

The bank first noticed irregularities with the list when a JPM employee observed that it contained exactly 1,048,576 rows, the maximum allowed by Microsoft Excel.

But they really found out the customers were fabricated after the bank spammed the 4 million fake accounts with cross-marketing opportunities and nearly all bounced back.

JPMorgan Chase shut the site down and sued the 30-year-old founder of Frank almost immediately.

What’s happening now? 🤔

Just yesterday, Javice and co-defendant Olivier Amar, who was Frank's chief growth officer, were each convicted on all four counts they faced: securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy.

They both are now facing up to 30 years in prison.

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