Charlie Javice convicted of defrauding JPMorgan in $175M startup sale

Generational fraud & startup culture

• Several commenters argue high-profile frauds by founders in their 20s/30s (Theranos, FTX, Frank, Fyre Festival) reflect a culture that throws huge capital and status at very young, often immature founders.
• Others counter that young people did not “invent” fraud; historical examples of large-scale fraud by people in their 20s are cited.
• “Fake it till you make it” is seen as having escalated from puffery into outright fabrication of users, revenue, or products.

JPMorgan’s role & due diligence failures

• Many are baffled that JPMorgan could pay $175M for a user base without robust verification.
• Timeline discussion: the fake data was created during due diligence, with third-party firms validating only superficial aspects (e.g., row counts) rather than reality of users.
• Some defend JPMorgan: there’s always trust in deals; you can’t fully protect against shameless fraud without making most acquisitions impossible.
• Others say this looks like incompetence: even basic spot-checking of users could have exposed the fraud.

Is the bank “in on it”?

• A minority suggests JPMorgan may have been willing to buy an obviously inflated story because it wanted growth and a narrative, not precision.
• Most push back: even if an investor is careless or reckless, lying about core business metrics is still criminal fraud.

Forbes 30 Under 30 as a red flag

• The Forbes list is widely derided as a marketing product and “anti-signal.”
• People report mediocre peers making the list via networking or investor push, and note multiple list alumni later charged with serious fraud.

Motives: data as the real asset

• Commenters emphasize the bank’s primary interest was not the product but the supposed 4M+ young users as future credit card / loan customers, in a world where new bank customers are said to cost >$1,000 each.
• Some express schadenfreude that the data was fake, so no real students will be spammed.

Ethics, engineers, and legal system

• The engineer who refused to generate synthetic data is held up as an ethics case-study in “say no” to illegal requests.
• People discuss engineering ethics courses and their limits in changing behavior.
• Thread touches on pardons and political clemency: some claim fraudsters can sometimes “buy” pardons; others note this is a federal case but still think a pardon is unlikely.