New York — A top executive at a startup that facilitated the process for college students applying for financial aid was sentenced Wednesday to more than five years in prison for defrauding JPMorgan Chase in its $175 million acquisition of the company four years ago.
The Manhattan federal court ruling on Olivier Amar came a month later Charlie Javisfounder of the startup known as Frank, was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In sentencing Ammar to five years and eight months in prison, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said Amar was “intimately involved in the fraud,” including creating documents that falsely claimed the company had more than 4 million young customers when it actually had fewer than 400,000.
“Although you were not the instigator of the fraud or the person who made the greatest misrepresentation, you were an essential part of it,” he said.
A jury convicted the couple in March of submitting false records to the bank to convince it that Frank had millions of clients when the deal was being negotiated in the summer of 2021. At trial, witnesses, including bank employees, testified that the number of clients mattered because JPMorgan Chase hoped they would start using the bank’s financial services.
Before the verdict was pronounced, Ammar choked up as he talked about the damage the scandal had caused to his family, saying it was pain “that will haunt me forever.”
He said he was “deeply saddened” that the company he created to facilitate the process of applying for and receiving financial aid is no longer operating, especially since it helped students get into and stay in college.
“I am deeply saddened by the suffering that occurred in the wake of Frank’s fall,” Ammar said.
In addition to the prison sentence, the judge also ordered Ammar to pay $223 million in compensation. That figure includes $54 million in legal fees that prosecutors said the bank was contractually obligated to pay on Amar’s behalf because he worked with Javis at the company after the takeover occurred.