JPMorgan Chase & Co. was hit with $115 million in lawyers’ bills for Charlie Javice and a second executive convicted of defrauding the bank, yet another twist in a years-long legal saga that’s captivated Wall Street.
The defense tab, revealed last week when Javice was sentenced to seven years in prison, is roughly two-thirds of the $175 million the bank paid for Javice’s student-finance company, Frank. A Delaware court previously ruled that the terms of that deal required the bank to cover Javice and co-defendant Olivier Amar’s legal costs.
The legal bill is the latest fallout for JPMorgan from the disastrous transaction. It also illustrates how expensive high-stakes litigation involving top-flight lawyers can become. There are few litigants besides the nation’s largest bank that could afford to pay such costs.
“Huge, huge number,” said Kevin O’Brien, a former federal prosecutor now working as a white-collar defense lawyer in New York. “She had a lot of high-priced legal talent.”
It’s unclear why Javice and Amar’s defense costs were so high. They appear to dwarf those of Theranos Inc.’s Elizabeth Holmes, who amassed at least $30 million in legal bills for her defense, according to a government filing ahead of her November 2022 sentencing. Holmes got 11 years in prison.
