The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has taken legal action against Olivier Amar, former Chief Growth Officer of Frank, in connection with fraud related to the company’s $175 million sale to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. in 2021. This follows previous charges filed against Charlie Javice, Frank’s founder and former CEO, for his involvement in the same fraudulent scheme. The alleged deception involved misrepresenting the availability of valuable data on 4.25 million students who used Frank’s service, when in reality, the number was much lower, at less than 300,000.

According to the SEC’s revised complaint, Amar instructed a Frank engineering employee to create an artificial or “synthetic” dataset to supplement the actual data obtained from website visitors. The purpose of this was to meet JPMorgan Chase’s due diligence request regarding Frank’s user data before the acquisition. When the engineering employee refused to generate fictitious data, Javice and Amar allegedly collaborated to obtain data from external sources. Javice purportedly paid a data science professor to fabricate the necessary data, while Amar negotiated with an external data compiler and ultimately acquired data on 4.5 million students at a cost of $105,000. Frank then presented this data as genuine customer information in response to JPMorgan Chase’s inquiries after the acquisition was completed.

Apart from the charges previously brought against Javice, the amended complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York accuses Amar of violating Section 17(a)(1) and (3) of the Securities Act of 1933, as well as Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rules 10b-5(a) and (c) thereunder. Amar also faces charges of aiding and abetting Javice’s violations of these provisions.

The SEC’s investigation into this matter was led by Wesley Wintermyer and Lindsay Moilanen of the New York Regional Office, with the litigation being handled by Mr. Wintermyer and Daniel Loss, under the supervision of Tejal Shah. The SEC acknowledges the support and cooperation of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, which has announced parallel criminal charges related to the case.