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Charlie Javice, who was convicted for defrauding JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million, is demanding a new trial — claiming the judge’s law clerks got jobs with the banking giant’s law firm after her trial finished.
In a motion filed in Manhattan federal court, the 33-year-old’s lawyers alleged that both of US Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein’s clerks had accepted jobs at Davis Polk & Wardwell, the powerhouse law firm that represents JPMorgan Chase.
“This commitment … was not disclosed to defense counsel until October 2025 (after trial and sentencing), is an apparent conflict of interest that creates, at a minimum, an appearance of impropriety,” Javice’s lawyers wrote in the Monday filing.
Javice’s attorneys are taking aim at Hellerstein despite the federal judge in Manhattan telling the convicted fraudster that she was a “good person who has done bad things” when he sentenced her to seven years in prison in late September.
Hellerstein told a sobbing Javice at sentencing that her pleas for mercy, which included reference to her Holocaust survivor grandmother, were “very moving” and that the way she’s devoted her to charitable works is “highly commendable.”
“I sentence people not because they’re bad, but because they do bad things,” Hellerstein told Javice. “I don’t think you’ll be committing other crimes and that you’ll be devoting your life to service, but others have to be deterred.”
Javice, 33, was sentenced after a jury found her guilty of conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud and securities fraud. Prosecutors said she duped JPMorgan into buying her company for $175 million by falsely claiming her fintech startup Frank had 4.25 million users when it only had about 300,000.
According to the motion, both of Hellerstein’s clerks worked as summer associates at Davis Polk in 2023 and accepted full-time job offers at the end of the summer. They deferred their start dates to September 2025 to complete their clerkships.
Javice’s lawyers also pointed to a newspaper article that reported Hellerstein was “nodding off” during the trial, arguing that the clerks had an “outsized influence on rulings.”
The motion cites an instance during the trial when the judge, after conferring with his clerk, allowed a prosecutor to re-ask a question over a defense objection.
“My law clerk agrees with you. You can ask the question,” Hellerstein said, according to the transcript.
“This episode shows that the clerk was participating in real time in decisions concerning the permissible scope of examination on one of the most consequential subjects in the case, and that the clerk’s input aligned with the prosecution in a way that benefitted her future employer Davis Polk and her future client JPMC,” Javice’s lawyers wrote in the filing.
Javice’s lawyers said they only learned of the conflict after the trial and sentencing, when Davis Polk sent a letter to the court saying it had implemented an “ethical screen” to prevent the clerks from working on the case.
Davis Polk was not a peripheral player in the case, according to Javice’s attorneys. The firm’s lawyers appeared at hearings, litigated discovery issues and attended every day of the six-week trial, the filing alleged.
At one point, they even occupied the government’s seats at the counsel table, according to a court transcript.
JPMorgan is also suing Javice in a separate civil case in Delaware. The bank has declined to comment on Wednesday’s filling.
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The Post has sought comment from Hellerstein, Davis Polk and the US Attorney’s Office.
The legal battle over the clerks’ alleged conflict comes as JPMorgan is fighting to stop paying Javice’s legal bills, which have ballooned to more than $73 million — with another $13 million added after her conviction.
Combined with co-defendant Olivier Amar’s legal costs, the pair’s bills have topped $128 million — nearly three-quarters of the $175 million JPMorgan paid for Frank.
In a separate court filing in Delaware Chancery Court, the bank accused Javice and her lawyers of treating the fee advancement as a “blank check,” billing for personal items like cellulite butter and luxury hotel upgrades.
JPMorgan also alleged that one of Javice’s lawyers billed for 24 hours of work in a single day.
A spokesperson for Javice has denied the allegations, telling The Post that the cellulite butter “wasn’t hers, and it wasn’t billed by her.”
English (US)