Closing arguments started Wednesday morning and stretched into the early night within the Charlie Javice fraud trial in New York — with one phrase taking part in a starring function.
That pivotal phrase is “person.”
Federal prosecutors say that nearly 4 years in the past, Javice defrauded the nation’s largest financial institution, JPMorgan Chase, out of $175 million, the worth the financial institution paid for her monetary support web site, Frank.
“Charlie Javice and Olivier Amar bought Frank for $175 million value of lies,” prosecutor Nicholas Chiuchiolo advised jurors, starting his closing argument towards the web site founder and her lieutenant-turned-codefendant.
The pair persistently assured JPMorgan “that Frank had over 4 million customers and {that a} person was somebody who’d began an account by offering their first title, final title, cellphone quantity, and e-mail,” Chiuchiolo stated.
These customers by no means existed, the prosecutor advised jurors. At most, the web site had collected names, cellphone numbers, and emails for 300,000, the prosecutor stated.
As a substitute, Javice and Amar “generated faux information for 4 million individuals who didn’t exist” and handed it off to the financial institution as actual to clinch the deal and grow to be multi-millionaires, he stated. “The names, cellphone numbers, emails? All have been faux.”
Customers meant future financial institution prospects, prosecutors say
Prosecutors say Javice tricked financial institution executives into considering that in the event that they bought Frank, they’d grow to be the brand new house owners of the names, emails, and addresses of all 4 million of those Frank customers, all of whom had used the positioning to no less than start submitting out a federal monetary support kind.
They have been “in the beginning of their monetary journeys,” the prosecutor stated. JPMorgan may use Frank’s information — these names and different contact data — to achieve these “customers” straight, promoting them their very first checking accounts, bank cards, and automobile loans.
In 5 weeks of testimony, and in closing arguments Wednesday, attorneys for Javice sought to indicate that this isn’t what she had meant by customers in any respect.
As a substitute, her attorneys say, she advised the financial institution that 4 million individuals had merely visited the web site and clicked round a bit, a quantity supported by Google Analytics.
There isn’t any approach the nation’s largest financial institution would have ever believed that 4 million individuals had created Frank web site accounts and begun filling out federal monetary support kinds, Javice’s lead protection lawyer, Jose Baez, advised jurors.
“If 4.25 million individuals went to that web site, there is not any approach all of them stuffed out FAFSAs,” Baez stated, referring to the Free Software for Federal Scholar Support stuffed out by 17 million college students a 12 months.
“I’ll inform you straight up — they knew,” Baez stated of the financial institution, which he stated had performed its personal investigation into Frank. “They knew precisely what they have been shopping for,” he stated.
“‘Consumer’ means many issues, together with a web site customer,” learn a slide utilized in closing arguments for Amar. His protection lawyer, Matthew I. Menchel, complained to jurors that prosecutors are unfairly making an attempt to “lump collectively” Amar and Javice.
Amar was out of the loop for what prosecutors are calling key moments of their alleged conspiracy and really urged that some incorrect site visitors statistics be corrected throughout negotiations, the lawyer argued.
“That is inconsistent with somebody who’s making an attempt to defraud any individual, and it is inconsistent with their working collectively,” Menchel advised jurors.
JPMorgan wished Javice, not her information
All through 5 weeks of testimony, Javice’s protection attorneys have pushed the idea that she was a younger and promising microfinance star. The financial institution wished her, not her information, and solely cried “fraud” months later out of purchaser’s regret, Baez advised jurors Wednesday.
Baez, who delivered closing statements as lead lawyer within the acquittal of Casey Anthony, often used humor to persuade jurors it was laughable to suppose JPMorgan Chase was ever bamboozled.
“Someone robbed the financial institution!” he mocked, of the financial institution’s response in firing Javice and shuttering Frank a 12 months after the merger. “It was Charlie the Child!”
At one other level, Baez joked that to JPMorgan, $175 million was “Not some huge cash in any respect. This was Monopoly cash.”
And who was the banker the Monopoly sport was based mostly on, he requested hypothetically, answering his personal query to laughter within the courtroom: “JPMorgan himself.”
The definition of ‘person’
A central dispute in entrance of jurors — as they listened to closing arguments by attorneys for the federal government, for Javice, and for her co-defendant — is that this: How did Javice, 32, and Amar, 50, outline “person” in negotiations with JPMorgan? As a anonymous clicker? Or as a possible Chase buyer whom the financial institution may e-mail and textual content?
US District Decide Alvin Hellerstein raised this query in courtroom on Tuesday as a part of his preparation for instructing the jury on the regulation earlier than deliberations.
“What concerning the argument that by telling Chase that ‘Now we have 4.25 million customers,’ that they have been telling the reality?” he requested Georgia Kostopoulos, an assistant US lawyer.
“It was a lie,” the prosecutor shortly answered.
“However we’ve got a quantity precisely the identical because the variety of customers that visited the web site,” the choose pushed, referring to the Google Analytics whole. “And so they’re referred to as customers.”
Kostopoulos countered that each Javice and Amar have been current at a July 21, 2021, assembly the place Javice assured JPMorgan executives {that a} person was somebody who had offered Frank with their title and different private figuring out data as a part of signing up for a web site account.
The choose restricted closing arguments to 2 hours per facet.
The federal government offered its arguments first, adopted by Javice’s. After lunch, jurors heard arguments on behalf of Amar, adopted by a quick rebuttal assertion by the federal government.
The 2 co-defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit wire and financial institution fraud, together with separate counts of wire, financial institution, and securities fraud. They face potential most sentences of 30 years in jail.
March 26, 2025: This story was up to date all through the day on Wednesday to incorporate particulars from daylong closing arguments.
