Charlie Javice appeared for a pretrial hearing Thursday in her fraud case.The Frank founder’s lawyer accused federal prosecutors of withholding key evidence in the case. The judge sided in part with the defense, ordering the government to force JP Morgan to release more evidence.
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A federal judge on Thursday ruled that prosecutors must compel JP Morgan to find more evidence that could help Charlie Javice, the founder of the financial aid startup Frank, in her defense in her criminal fraud trial.
The judge also set an October 2024 start-date for the criminal trial of the embattled entrepreneur.
Javice, 30, is accused of defrauding JP Morgan Chase out of $175 million in 2021 by selling it a startup business called Frank which purported to help students navigate securing college loans. Federal prosecutors say that of the four million clients Javice claimed to have, only a few hundred thousand were legitimate.
On Thursday, inside U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan, lawyers for Javice and a co-defendant argued for more documents from JP Morgan Chase.
Javice’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, argued that the government in its complaint had “cherry picked” documents to make his client look culpable, but failed to adequately search for documents that might exonerate her.
“Give us the one really bad email and don’t give us something else,” Spiro said in court, describing the government’s protocol.
“That’s not how this case should proceed,” he added.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Dina McLeod argued that the government was fair in sharing its evidence with the defense.
“These emails, if we have them, they have them,” she said.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ruled that in a handful of instances where specific emails were referenced in the complaint, the government needed to compel JP Morgan Chase to produce all emails in those chains, and all documents cited within.
“The government is to require JP Morgan Chase to review its files and to assure that all parts of the chain in which these emails are a part have been provided, and all documents referenced,” Judge Hellerstein said from the bench.
However the judge ruled against the defense’s request that the government compel the financial behemoth to turn over additional emails from specific employees referenced in the complaint.
Spiro and a lawyer for Javice co-defendant Olivier Amar, Sean Buckley, said they soon would file a subpoena to get those additional emails, based on a different legal rule than the one they used to argue in court on Thursday.
Spiro repeated that he sought, “all communications around all communications” that they saw fit to quote in their accusation.
Judge Hellerstein warned that the defense’s broad requests for documents was appropriate for a civil case, not a criminal one. He set a date for both sides to meet again in court on January 17, 2024 to work out further scheduling.
He also set October 28, 2024 as a trial start date.
Meanwhile, a Delaware judge ruled that JP Morgan Chase is violating a commitment that it made upon acquiring Frank to pay a significant portion of Javice’s legal bills. Her lawyers say that JP Morgan Chase owes them $835,000 of the around $3.8 million they have so far charged.
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