At the beginning of the year, our colleague Melissa Corn got a tip about a student financial

aid startup called Frank.

A source of mine that I've known for many years flagged for me this lawsuit that had been

filed back in December by J.P. Morgan in federal court.

And it was filed against this person named Charlie Javice.

And I did not know who Charlie was at the time, but my source said, hey, you might want

to look at this.

What did you find when you started digging into it?

I cover higher ed.

I write a lot about college admissions financial aid.

I was not particularly familiar with this company, Frank.

And I assumed it was kind of a small player.

But once I saw the dollar amount for how much J.P. Morgan had paid for this company back

in 2021, it was $175 million.

This was clearly not a fly-by-night little operation here.

Melissa dug into the court documents and started looking into what happened between J.P. Morgan

and Charlie Javice's company, Frank.

And she says, what began as a deal to get J.P. Morgan access to younger customers, has

ended with multiple lawsuits, accusations of criminal fraud, and the J.P. Morgan CEO calling

the whole deal a huge mistake.

Welcome to the Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Kate Leimbaugh, it's Wednesday, April 12th.

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