The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed additional charges in regard to the Frank case and its sale to JP Morgan for $175 million in 2021. According to a statement by the SEC, former Chief Growth Officer of Frank, Olivier Amar, has been charged with fraud for allegedly deceiving JP Morgan in regard to the number of users on the Frank platform.
Frank was a student grant and aid platform that sought to streamline the process of gaining funds to attend university. The process today, tends to be fragmented and convoluted. According to the SEC, JP Morgan believed there was data on 4.25 million customers when the number was allegedly far less.
Frank founder and former CEO Charlie Javice has already been charged by the SEC with similar allegations. There is also an ongoing criminal case.
The SEC’s complaint alleges that Amar “directed a Frank engineering employee to generate an artificial, “synthetic” set of data to supplement actual data that Frank had acquired from website visitors.”
Reportedly, the engineer declined, which caused the executives to pursue another path to create student data.
Frank allegedly passed off the data as being real customers in response to inquiries from JP Morgan after the acquisition.
The SEC noted that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has announced parallel criminal charges today.