(Bloomberg) — A defense lawyer for startup founder Charlie Javice tried to suggest that a key prosecution witness at her trial for allegedly defrauding JPMorgan Chase & Co. fabricated his testimony because she spurned his romantic overtures.
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Patrick Vovor, the former chief engineer at Javice’s student-loan site, Frank, said on the stand last week that he refused her request to create “synthetic” customer data because he thought it might be illegal. Javice, 32, is accused of vastly inflating Frank’s customer numbers to convince JPMorgan to acquire the company for $175 million in 2021.
Under questioning from one of Javice’s lawyers on Monday, Vovor acknowledged that he made romantic overtures toward his former boss, sending her flowers and an unsigned card with a heart emoji, as well as personal messages, photos, playlists and videos. Javice reported Vovor to Matt Glazer, Frank’s general counsel and head of human resources, who told him to “stop doing it.”
“Mr. Vovor, you wanted to date Ms. Javice, didn’t you?” lawyer Ronald Sullivan Jr. asked the witness at the start of an aggressive cross-examination in Manhattan federal court. Vovor responded with a “yes.”
Romantic Disappointment
The testimony of Vovor, who joined JPMorgan after Frank’s acquisition and still works at the bank, is at the heart of the government’s fraud case against Javice. But Sullivan sought to suggest to the jury that Vovor was motivated to lie due to his romantic disappointment and to avoid getting in trouble himself.
“You resent the fact that Ms. Javice didn’t want to date you, isn’t that right?” the lawyer asked.
“No,” Vovor answered.
“And because you resent the fact, you have made up evidence, made up testimony in front of this jury, didn’t you?” Sullivan asked.
“No. No I don’t,” he responded.
Prosecutors claim Javice and her co-defendant, former Frank executive Olivier Amar, falsified data to show the company had more than 4 million users when it really had fewer than 300,000. JPMorgan shut down Frank, a site that helped students file their Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, which is required by most colleges and graduate schools.
Javice and Amar, who have pleaded not guilty, are arguing JPMorgan was focused on the value of the site, not the number of users they could deliver. Their legal teams have tried to show that the numbers they provided to the bank often reflected the number of visitors to the site, not the much lower number of users who actively set up accounts by providing a name, email address and phone number.
