Charlie Javice must wear an ankle monitor despite her budding Pilates career, judge rules

• Charlie Javice faces up to 30 years for tricking JPMorgan into buying her fintech startup for $175M.
• After Friday's verdict, her lawyers argued wearing an ankle monitor would ruin her Pilates career.
• A judge Tuesday ordered her to wear the monitor, but suggested he may change his mind in the future.

Convicted JPMorgan fraudster Charlie Javice will have a tougher time teaching Pilates, at least for now.

US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled Tuesday that Charlie Javice must wear a GPS ankle monitor in the weeks prior to her August sentencing, at which she faces a possible maximum of 30 years in prison.

He also invited Javice's legal team to return to him with a revised bail package and new arguments.

"Come up with a package," he advised, after suggesting he would consider ditching the ankle monitor if some other constraints — including an electronically monitored home curfew — were offered.

"If you come up with a successful package you would be able to change the terms," he said.

Javice, 33, teaches Pilates in Miami Beach, where she and her mother live in the same waterfront apartment building. In her previous career, she founded Frank, a website that helped students fill out their federal financial aid forms.

A jury found on Friday that Javice used fake data to trick JPMorgan, the country's largest bank, into believing her website had gathered the names and other personal data of more than 4 million students. The bank had hoped to market checking accounts and credit cards to these students, but later found that Javice had data for fewer than 300,000 of them.

The judge's ankle monitor decision on Tuesday followed some 90 minutes of arguments in federal court in Manhattan — complete with court exhibits showing Javice teaching Pilates.

In arguing against the ankle monitor, Javice's lawyer, Ron Sullivan, told the judge that Javice has never missed a day of court and is not a flight risk.

Wearing the bulky device once again — as she had for several weeks before a November decision granting its removal — would be a severe impediment to her career as a Pilates instructor, Sullivan said.

"To have your legs in the air and the monitor going up and down on your leg — it is a significant encumbrance," Sullivan told the judge. The lawyer held both arms aloft and waved them back and forth to demonstrate as he stood at a podium.

While wearing an ankle bracelet previously, she was only able to teach lessons briefly, and for family and friends, Sullivan said.

Her classes require "demanding physical movement and full flexibility and range of motion, specifically around her feet and ankles," her lawyers argued in court filings earlier Tuesday.

"Ms. Javice's services are sought after because her instruction is particularly challenging and dynamic," the filing said.

In Hellerstein's courtroom, an assistant US attorney countered that an ankle bracelet is necessary now that Javice, who holds dual French-US citizenship, has been convicted.

"We would be well within our rights to seek remand," said the prosecutor, Georgia V. Kostopoulos.

"And we understand that pretrial services would not be opposed to that," she said, referring to the agency that handles post-conviction supervision.

France does not have an extradition agreement with the United States, prosecutors have said.

Hellerstein said that he had examined a GPS ankle monitor earlier in the day.

"It's not heavy. It probably weighs a pound," he told the prosecutors and defense lawyers.

"So I don't know," he said. "I accept what you say, that it's a restriction on her ability to do the advanced Pilates that she does."

Still, he added, "I can't say there is no risk of flight."

He briefly retreated to chambers — holding printouts of photos of Javice teaching — to think it over before deciding.

The judge also required Javice's codefendant, Olivier Amar, to wear an ankle monitor. As with Javice, Amar's lawyers — who'd argued that a monitor "is quite large" and "makes him a pariah" — were invited to pitch the judge an alternate bail package.

Amar is free on a $1 million bond. Javice is free on a $2 million bond. The judge required both to be fitted with ankle monitors before leaving the courthouse on Tuesday.