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> Frank’s chief software engineer, Patrick Vovor, testified that Javice had asked him to generate synthetic data to support her claim that the company had more than 4 million users. When Vovor asked if that was legal, prosecutors said, Javice and Amar assured him that it was — and told him they didn’t want to end up in orange prison jumpsuits. Vovor testified that he refused to help. “I told them I would not do anything illegal,” Vovor told jurors.

> Seeking to dent Vovor’s credibility, defense lawyers suggested he was resentful that Javice didn’t want to date him.

That is one hell of a defense

Fraud is fraud, but I'm happy JPMorgan got caught up in this mess. Buying a promising startup for its technology or product is one thing, but the bank literally only cared about the personal data of its supposed 4 million high school and college aged users. Good riddance the whole thing imploded and there weren't real teenagers being spammed credit card and car loan offers.

What’s crazy to me about all of this is that the College Board will happily sell you the contact info for the 2mn students who take the SAT each year.

We’d probably not know about this if Javice just spent 10 minutes thinking, created a small scholarship, bought student contact info to “market” the scholarship, and then used that real data to commit fraud.

Maybe some recipients notice and report something to JPMorgan, but how many 18 year olds are actively reporting spam?

I don't understand how one could sell a company with millions of fake users and not expect the purchaser of that company to realize those users are fake?

I understand how one could think you'd get away with it if one were lying to investors who might lack the ability to verify the claims

But actually selling the company? How would that possibly work?

Is "under 30" in "the Forbes 30 under 30" their age, or the likely upper bound of their prison sentences?

I really don't think that the ankle monitor is going to interfere with Pilates instruction.

Florida absolutely has a nonzero amount of "Pilates teachers with ankle monitors".

Bad decision.

> Javice asked an “outside data scientist” to fabricate a list of customers when the bank asked for proof of Frank’s user data, -NBC

If they had 3 million fake accounts and didn’t catch the fraud, then they were in on it.

It’s a great deal. If the company does well, everyone wins. If it doesn’t, then you already know you can claim fraud.

At that point it’s not fraud.

Another fraud-star is officially born.

Joining the ranks of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman Fried all under the Forbes’ "30 Under 30" list.

Related discussion

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35441211

How many other stats we see are faked?

She claimed 4.25m users only 300k real.

Startup idea: zero knowledge proof audit mechanism for investors to verify usage stats.

If she's smart she salted away a couple million to buy a pardon.

If you're going to steal $175M, don't steal it from the most powerful bank on earth.

Luckily for her, pardons are on sale now.

I somehow have the suspicion that many successful startups began as frauds but their founders either weren't caught or the investors weren't interested to defer them to justice.

Guess "fake it till you make it" doesn't scale well.

>Prosecutors said Javice ended up paying a college friend $18,000 to create millions of fake names with pedigree information. The results were sent to JPMorgan’s third-party data provider, but testimony showed that firm never checked to ensure the people were real.

If someone tries to sell me something and I ask for proof, I would be very stupid not to check that evidence.

Why do big banks hire stupid people and let them lead large deals?

So what did the 'due diligence' people actually do on this transaction?

Meanwhile SoftBank is lobbing $40Billion at OpenAI and nobody can really verify if they have the 400 million weekly active users they claim.

Hi Charlie, IANAL, but if you’d like to get out of this mess I suggest you donate $1-2M to Ronald Krump. Enjoy the freedom!

Her fate is going to come down to whether she pocketed enough from the transaction to purchase a pardon.

The best and the brightest.

So deserved.

Forbes 30 Under 30!

Pardon inbound