A former executive at a startup focused on simplifying college financial aid applications has been sentenced to over five years in prison for defrauding JPMorgan Chase during the bank’s $175 million acquisition of the company. The sentencing took place Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
Olivier Amar, who served as chief growth officer at Frank, received a sentence of five years and eight months from Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein. The judge said Amar was “intimately involved in the fraud,” including helping create documents that falsely stated Frank 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 most misrepresentations, you were a key part of it,” Judge Hellerstein told Amar.
Amar’s sentencing follows that of Charlie Javice, Frank’s founder, who was given a seven-year prison term last month. Both were convicted by a jury in March for providing fake records to JPMorgan Chase while negotiating the acquisition deal in summer 2021. Witnesses from JPMorgan testified that customer numbers played an important role because the bank anticipated those users would eventually use its financial services.
Before his sentence was handed down, Amar became emotional as he described how much pain his actions had caused his family, calling it pain “that will haunt me forever.” He expressed regret over Frank’s closure and noted its original mission: making college more accessible by easing access to financial aid.
“I’m heartbroken by the suffering caused in the aftermath of Frank’s downfall,” Amar said.
