The criminal trial of Charlie Javice begins today in New York in what will be the latest legal clash involving a young tech entrepreneur accused of pushing the limits of the “fake it ‘til you make it” mantra.

Javice, the former CEO of Frank, a college financial planning platform, stands accused of actually not being frank—or four counts of fraud, legally speaking—about the number of customers in her database when she sold the company to JPMorgan in 2021 for $175 million. The sale netted the now 31-year-old Javice $21 million for her stake, and she was due millions more before the bank said Frank wasn’t worth what it was led to believe.

The bank filed a lawsuit in January 2023 claiming she lied; three months later, federal authorities arrested Javice and the SEC filed a civil case against her.

The prosecution’s case

Prosecutors allege that Javice employed a data scientist to falsify Frank users to make it appear as though the company had 4.25 million customers, when in reality, the number was closer to 300,000.

• After the sale, JPMorgan sent marketing emails to 400,000 supposed customers—and only 28% were delivered and 1.1% were opened, per the bank’s lawsuit.
• At the trial, Javice’s business partner and Frank’s Chief Growth Officer (note: all job titles are made-up) Olivier Amar, who is named as a codefendant, is expected to testify that Javice “concealed information and deceived him.”

The defense’s case

It’s essentially a legal argument that JPMorgan has buyer’s remorse.

• A spokesperson for Javice’s legal team told the Financial Times to “do a Google search,” saying it’s easy to find numerous articles where Javice described Frank’s user base as “in the several hundred thousands.”
• The case comes down to due diligence, and whether JPMorgan was deceived or misinterpreted honest data, a governance expert told The Guardian.

The defense has also promised “some surprises” and maintains that JPMorgan exerted influence over the DOJ to push for criminal charges.

Big picture: If convicted, Javice could join pharma bro Martin Shkreli and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison as another Forbes’ “30 Under 30” honoree to wind up behind bars, as well as fellow Forbes darling and convicted felon Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. Javice is facing up to 30 years in prison on three counts and a max of 20 years on the fourth count, and, we assume, a spot on the yet-to-be-released Forbes’ “30 Over 30 Serving 30.”—DL

US and Russia talk Ukraine in Saudi Arabia today. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other US officials are meeting with a Russian delegation today to discuss ending the war in Ukraine, as well as other topics aimed at strengthening US-Russian ties. However, many US allies are concerned about what the bilateral talks will bring. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country won’t accept any peace deal it didn’t help negotiate. And European leaders held emergency talks in Paris yesterday to address being shut out of negotiations that impact their security.

Delta plane overturns while landing in Toronto. This should add to your enthusiasm in clapping the next time your plane safely touches down: A Delta flight crashed yesterday while landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport and appeared upside down in the snow in photos of the scene. Thankfully, all 80 passengers and crew on the flight, which originated in Minneapolis, were evacuated, but at least 15 suffered non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said. The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Trump asks SCOTUS to let him tell agency heads “you’re fired.” President Trump has asked the Supreme Court to intervene on an emergency basis to let him dismiss the head of the independent agency that protects government whistleblowers. A lower court reinstated Hampton Dellinger as the head of the Office of Special Counsel while Dellinger’s suit challenging his termination as unlawful continues. This is Trump’s first appeal to the highest court about the extent of his power in his second term, but more cases on the issue are also expected to reach the Supreme Court as he looks to reshape the government.—AR

As you scramble to track down a year’s worth of documents with tax day looming, you’re not the only one thinking about the IRS. Elon Musk’s DOGE is seeking to get into the agency’s system containing detailed financial information on US taxpayers, both individuals and businesses.

According to the IRS, the system, known as The Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS)…

• Allows “instantaneous visual access to certain taxpayer accounts,” which include personal identification numbers and bank information.
• Can be used for “researching account information and requesting returns,” as well as for “automatically generating notices, collection documents and other outputs.”

Access to this system is severely limited, even within the IRS, and DOGE’s bid to enter it has raised concerns at the agency, according to The Washington Post.

A White House spokesperson told news outlets that DOGE needed to get in because “it takes direct access to the system to identify and fix” waste, fraud, and abuse. DOGE is also tasked with helping to modernize systems, and the IRS’s computer systems—some of which date back to the 1960s—have long been considered a problem.

Zoom out: DOGE’s entry into other government systems containing sensitive data has drawn privacy concerns from Democratic lawmakers and legal challenges. A judge has temporarily halted DOGE’s access to Treasury payment and data systems. In a separate case, a judge said yesterday that she hoped to rule within 24 hours on whether to bar DOGE from several other agencies’ systems. Also yesterday, the head of the Social Security Administration resigned after refusing to give a DOGE team access to that agency’s data.—AR

Gold is about to reach Gold Status. The precious commodity is flying commercial from the UK to New York in droves, as global speculation about a trade war spurred by President Trump’s policies has ignited financial institutions to get their hands on bullion.

Why? For one, investors are worried that Trump will institute a tariff on gold, so they’re keen on getting it into the US before a duty is imposed. But gold is also racking up frequent flyer miles because those fears about tariffs have resulted in a gap between prices for physical gold in the UK, where the Bank of England houses it, and in New York, where futures contracts on gold are sold.

• Gold futures are at a record high, closing last week at $2,909 in New York. Prices of gold per ounce in London have been about $20 lower per ounce—a highly unusual difference.
• This presents traders with an arbitrage opportunity to make money off of sending gold from London to New York.

If you’re in line to get gold, you may be there a while. Waiting times to retrieve bars from the Bank of England vault have spiked to as long as eight weeks as it struggles to keep up with demand.—CC

If you want to buy a firetruck, there are only about three companies in the US you can turn to. And according to a deep dive from the New York Times, this industry consolidation has made it harder for municipalities to get their hands on those much-needed big red engines that bring toddlers joy and allow firefighters to provide life-saving assistance when fires rage.

There used to be local fire engine-makers across the country, per NYT, but as they struggled to get by in the late 1990s and early aughts, investment firms saw an opportunity. In 2006, a private equity firm combined several of them into a company called Rev Group, and the Times reports that it is now one of the three largest companies in the industry, which together control ~80% of the market. Margins have gone up as these firms have streamlined operations, but so have the wait times for truck deliveries: Rev Group currently has a $4 billion order backlog that’ll take an estimated 2 to 3 years to fulfill, according to NYT.—AR