Make that Charlie Avarice. (Fraud, glorious fraud.)

It's been nearly three years since I (virtually) ran into Charlie Javice. A decade ago, she founded Frank, a startup that helped students fill in financial aid applications. The idea was so hot, the execution so excellent, that, in 2021, JPMorgan Chase acquired the company for a cool $175M. Not crazy billionaire bro unicorn money, by any means. But Javice's $21M take was pretty good walking around money for someone still in her twenties. Plus she had a cushy retention bonus. 

Trouble was, Javice had pumped up the number of students Frank was helping. By a lot. By more than an order of magnitude. 

JPMorgan sued for fraud, federal prosecutors got involved, and this past September Javice was sentenced to seven years in prison for her fraud, glorious fraud.

Curiously, given that she had screwed her employer, Javice had some employment deal where JPMorgan Chase was required to pay her legal bills. And what a tab Charlie (who, I can't help but mention, has a hedge fund father and a life coach mother) rolled up while futilely defending herself.

Here’s what Charlie Javice did: She spent money on luxury hotel" upgrades, extravagant meals and cellulite butter, a personal care product that some people use to treat their skin, as a lawyer for the bank said in a hearing on Friday. (Source: NY Times - 11.14.25)

Additional detail is emerging about those expenses. Lamps. (The lawyers didn't have lamps?) Nutritional supplements. And: 

A $581 dinner for two. Nearly $1,000 in laundry fees for one. A Cookie Monster toddler toy. And however many gummy bears $529 gets you. (Sourec: NY Times - 12.22.25)

Her failed defense included lawyers who have represented the likes of Elon Musk, Harvey Weinstein and Sam Bankman-Fried. And she racked up over $70M in bills - tens of millions more than Elizabeth Holmes spent on her failed defense. One of her lawyers charged $2,025 an hour. Yikes on yikes!

A spokesman for Javice claimed that she "followed JPMorgan’s written policies both as an employee and during the legal proceedings." And noted that she didn't incur these expenses personally. Her attorneys - and she had over 100 who were billing - did. (Bet those policies have been tightened up a bit. If nothing else, they must have tightened up on paying for tightening up cellulite butter.)

When JPMorgan saw the legal bills floating in, they started pushing back, and she's now likely to be on the hook for reimbursing the company for those legal fees. (Along with returning the money she made on the sale of Frank, and the overall $175M JPMorgan paid for the company without doing its due diligence very diligently.)

I really don't get fraudsters. Do they really think they'll never get caught? 

Way back in the early 1970's, when women were increasingly joining the work force and entering non-traditional professions, there was a popular fragrance named Charlie. The models the ad campaign used were young, breezy, kicky women, meant to appeal to young professional women. Whenever I read Charlie Javice's name, I can see Shelley Hack (one of the models) confidently swinging down the street, heading into the office. 

And here we are, fifty years later, reading about Charlie Avarice Javice, fraudster and legal expense gouger. 

As another ad campaign had it way back in the dawn of the Ms. Magazine era: you've come a long way, baby.