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The gist of what she is alleged to have done: “An internal investigation revealed that Javice and Frank chief growth officer Olivier Amar — referred to as "CC-

The gist of what she is alleged to have done: “An internal investigation revealed that Javice and Frank chief growth officer Olivier Amar — referred to as "CC-1" in the federal charges — paid a New York data science professor $18,000 to create nearly 4 million fake accounts in order to juice Frank's user numbers, JPMorgan alleged in its lawsuit. Amar later bought a list of student email addresses from a marketing firm for $105,000 in order to make those accounts seem more credible, JPMorgan alleged”.

PaulWaldman 4y ago
Did they really pay a professor $18K to use a Faker library to generate 4 million records?? That's wild.
- eloff 4y ago
  If they’re that incompetent that they need to fake their database and think it’s a good idea, there’s little surprise that they’re also too incompetent to realize that task is only a couple hours of coding.
  - mostlystatic 4y ago
    You pay extra to hide the crime: """ After the August 3, 2021 Zoom meeting, the Data Science Professor returned a signed version of Frank’s NDA. The Data Science Professor’s usual hourly rate was $300. Javice unilaterally doubled the Data Science Professor’s rate to $600. [...] Specifically, on August 5, 2021 at 11:05 a.m., the Data Science Professor provided Javice an invoice for $13,300, documenting 22.17 hours of work over just three days. The invoice entries show that the bulk of his time was spent on the main task that Javice retained the Data Science Professor to perform – making up customer data. The Data Science Professor’s invoice indicated that he performed “college major generation” and “generation of all features except for the financials” while creating “first names, last names, emails, phone numbers” and “looking into whitepages.” In response to the initial invoice, Javice demanded that he remove all the details admitting to how they had created fake customers – and added a $4,700 bonus. In an email to the Data Science Professor at 12:39 p.m. on August 5, 2021, Javice wrote: “send the invoice back at $18k and just one line item for data analysis.” In total, Javice paid the Data Science Professor over $800 per hour for his work creating the Fake Customer List, which is 270% of his usual hourly rate. The Data Science Professor provided Javice the revised invoice via email seven minutes later at 12:46 p.m., commenting “Wow. Thank you. Here is the new invoice.” """ https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rNlNVTl.6yh8/v0 https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rNlNVTl....
    - yowzadave 4y ago
      I wonder why the Data Science Professor isn't named/charged as an accomplice. Maybe they are acting as a witness for the prosecution?
      - my_usernam3 4y ago
        Plausible deniability is my non professional guess
      - skeeter2020 4y ago
        it sounds like his initial invoice was quite clear in the work completed, then updated at the client's request. So while you can argue moral grounds for not doing this work, I don't think there's illegality, i.e. conspiracy.
        pciexpgpu 4y ago
        I mean if you are a professor and knowledgeable in how the startup uses the data, it’s hardly justifiable that “oh crap i didn’t know they were using it for illegal purposes”. They were totally complicit allegedly.
        romellem 4y ago
        This is spoken to [in the full complaint][1]. The data scientist was told Frank really did have 4 million users, and the scientist only needed to generate this "synthetic data" as a way to "anonymize" their "real" data. I.e. the scientist was duped: JAVICE told Scientist-1 [...] that she had a database of approximately 4 million people and wanted to create a database of anonymized data that mirrored the statistical properties of the original database (the “Synthetic Data Set”). [After JAVICE sends Scientist-1 the data], Scientist-1 understood that the data available via the Access Link Email - **a data set of approximately 142,000 people** (emphasis added) - was a random sample of a larger database which contained data for approximately 4 million people. In fact, that data represented every Frank user who had at least started a FAFSA. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1577861/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1577861...
  - bedatadriven 4y ago
    I read in an earlier report that their own developers refused to do the task. [1] Not clear if the professor knew what the fake data was being used for. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-12/jpmorgan-says-frank-was-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-12/jpmorg...
- dboreham 4y ago
  That's pretty reasonable imho. Probably took several days of back and forth to establish what they wanted. Then a day to knock up the script, generate the output. Now several more days of back and forth about whether it's what they really wanted. Pad a bit for the risk that they never pay, possibility of legal action in the future, etc.
josephd79 4y ago
So they paid someone 18k to just create a random list of fake email addresses? HAHA stupid
- vkou 4y ago
  1. It was way more than fake e-mails. 2. It's perfectly reasonable to ask someone to create a 'test' dataset for you. Just don't tell them that you're going full fraud with it. 3. People working for software firms get paid to create test datasets all the time. 18k for an outside one-time consultancy is not an insane number.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  The difference between software people and business people: Software People: Ha they paid 18k for fake emails! Business People: .. (nothing, they think nothing of spending 18k to push through a 175MM deal.)
solalf 4y ago
Amar’s LinkedIn profile description says: “ Enjoying what comes next” I guess it’ll be prison?

PaulWaldman 4y ago

Did they really pay a professor $18K to use a Faker library to generate 4 million records?? That's wild.

eloff 4y ago
If they’re that incompetent that they need to fake their database and think it’s a good idea, there’s little surprise that they’re also too incompetent to realize that task is only a couple hours of coding.
- mostlystatic 4y ago
  You pay extra to hide the crime: """ After the August 3, 2021 Zoom meeting, the Data Science Professor returned a signed version of Frank’s NDA. The Data Science Professor’s usual hourly rate was $300. Javice unilaterally doubled the Data Science Professor’s rate to $600. [...] Specifically, on August 5, 2021 at 11:05 a.m., the Data Science Professor provided Javice an invoice for $13,300, documenting 22.17 hours of work over just three days. The invoice entries show that the bulk of his time was spent on the main task that Javice retained the Data Science Professor to perform – making up customer data. The Data Science Professor’s invoice indicated that he performed “college major generation” and “generation of all features except for the financials” while creating “first names, last names, emails, phone numbers” and “looking into whitepages.” In response to the initial invoice, Javice demanded that he remove all the details admitting to how they had created fake customers – and added a $4,700 bonus. In an email to the Data Science Professor at 12:39 p.m. on August 5, 2021, Javice wrote: “send the invoice back at $18k and just one line item for data analysis.” In total, Javice paid the Data Science Professor over $800 per hour for his work creating the Fake Customer List, which is 270% of his usual hourly rate. The Data Science Professor provided Javice the revised invoice via email seven minutes later at 12:46 p.m., commenting “Wow. Thank you. Here is the new invoice.” """ https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rNlNVTl.6yh8/v0 https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rNlNVTl....
  - yowzadave 4y ago
    I wonder why the Data Science Professor isn't named/charged as an accomplice. Maybe they are acting as a witness for the prosecution?
    - my_usernam3 4y ago
      Plausible deniability is my non professional guess
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      it sounds like his initial invoice was quite clear in the work completed, then updated at the client's request. So while you can argue moral grounds for not doing this work, I don't think there's illegality, i.e. conspiracy.
      - pciexpgpu 4y ago
        I mean if you are a professor and knowledgeable in how the startup uses the data, it’s hardly justifiable that “oh crap i didn’t know they were using it for illegal purposes”. They were totally complicit allegedly.
        romellem 4y ago
        This is spoken to [in the full complaint][1]. The data scientist was told Frank really did have 4 million users, and the scientist only needed to generate this "synthetic data" as a way to "anonymize" their "real" data. I.e. the scientist was duped: JAVICE told Scientist-1 [...] that she had a database of approximately 4 million people and wanted to create a database of anonymized data that mirrored the statistical properties of the original database (the “Synthetic Data Set”). [After JAVICE sends Scientist-1 the data], Scientist-1 understood that the data available via the Access Link Email - **a data set of approximately 142,000 people** (emphasis added) - was a random sample of a larger database which contained data for approximately 4 million people. In fact, that data represented every Frank user who had at least started a FAFSA. [1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1577861/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1577861...
- bedatadriven 4y ago
  I read in an earlier report that their own developers refused to do the task. [1] Not clear if the professor knew what the fake data was being used for. [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-12/jpmorgan-says-frank-was-fraud https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-12/jpmorg...
dboreham 4y ago
That's pretty reasonable imho. Probably took several days of back and forth to establish what they wanted. Then a day to knock up the script, generate the output. Now several more days of back and forth about whether it's what they really wanted. Pad a bit for the risk that they never pay, possibility of legal action in the future, etc.

josephd79 4y ago

So they paid someone 18k to just create a random list of fake email addresses? HAHA stupid

vkou 4y ago
1. It was way more than fake e-mails. 2. It's perfectly reasonable to ask someone to create a 'test' dataset for you. Just don't tell them that you're going full fraud with it. 3. People working for software firms get paid to create test datasets all the time. 18k for an outside one-time consultancy is not an insane number.
BoorishBears 4y ago
The difference between software people and business people: Software People: Ha they paid 18k for fake emails! Business People: .. (nothing, they think nothing of spending 18k to push through a 175MM deal.)

solalf 4y ago

Amar’s LinkedIn profile description says: “ Enjoying what comes next” I guess it’ll be prison?