A Delaware judge ruled Thursday that JPMorgan Chase has no grounds to stop covering the legal expenses of Charlie Javice, a former finance executive who was convicted of defrauding the bank — even as JPMorgan described the mounting costs as “astronomical.”
Magistrate Judge Christian Wright of the Delaware Chancery Court determined that JPMorgan failed to clear what he described as a “challenging burden” — the bank could not demonstrate that Javice’s fees and expenses were “so unmistakably unreasonable or clearly abusive” that they reflected bad faith on her part.
JPMorgan did not offer any immediate response to the ruling.
Javice, 33, was found guilty in March 2025 of deceiving JPMorgan into purchasing her education startup, Frank, for $175 million back in 2021. She was subsequently sentenced to 85 months behind bars and is currently appealing both her conviction and her sentence.
The nation’s largest bank had been required to cover Javice’s legal costs since June 2023 under a prior court order. That same obligation extended to Olivier Amar, who served as Frank’s former chief growth officer and was also convicted in the case.
JPMorgan had separately sought to cut off legal expense payments for Amar as well, but Judge Wright rejected that request too. Amar received a sentence of 68 months in prison.
According to the ruling, the decision covers approximately $10.1 million in costs tied to Javice for the period spanning January through September 2025, and $11.3 million for Amar over a comparable timeframe.
