Catching up with a fired federal worker, a shrimper and a fraudster

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0:11This is the Endicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods here with Waylon Wong and Stephen Basaha. And we've been reflecting on how 2025 has been a little unusual for us at the podcast. There has been such a fire hose of economics news every single day that we've just been racing from government cuts to historic tariff announcements to unprecedented AI deals. Yeah, we don't need to pitch new story ideas anymore. It's always just tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. Tariffs all the way down. I know. And just explaining what just happened, how this fits into the economy, what a 50-year mortgage is. That's basically what we've been doing.

0:50And because events have been moving so fast, we wanted to check in with some people we've met through this wild ride through the economy. Like, after we got off the phone with them, how have they been doing? Yeah, so today's show, it is a special one. It's rest of the story from The Indicator. We meet up again with a woman fired by Doge, see how a pro-tariff shrimpers business has been going, and learn about the consequences of a pretty brazen tech startup's fraud.

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2:02Unexpected turns can bring new possibilities. With a hundred years of experience navigating ups and downs, Edward Jones can help guide you. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. Back at the start of the year, Doge was the huge story. Elon Musk's chainsaw was ripping into government agencies, firing people en masse. One of those people was Elizabeth Eneskevich at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the CFPB. My work phone and computer sort of make a doo-doo type of sound and says, oh, you've been kicked out. You need to log back in. So I'm thinking, oh, no, something bad has happened.

2:42This is from our story back in February, where we learned about how Elizabeth was fired from the CFPB. That's an agency that tries to protect customers of banks and financial services from getting ripped off. Yeah, I remember you said that as a high-performing attorney, she would be fine job-wise probably. So was she? Yeah, Waylon, I had that exact question. Hello again. Hi. Nice to see you. It's been months. It feels like it's been a decade. Yeah, so shortly after our interview, a former law school colleague of mine who saw what was happening and she said, you know, I'm really sorry to hear what's happened to you.

3:22I'm wondering if you would be interested in joining my firm. That firm does consumer class action lawsuits against big financial companies. So it was actually a very good match with the kind of work the CFPB does. And Elizabeth says that the kinds of interviews that she was doing with media, including the indicator, actually helped her through the recruitment. A hundred percent, I think it did. Yeah. So we were inadvertent corporate recruiters. Do we get a bonus? Maybe. Yeah, so she got the job, which was actually a promotion. She leads a team now and she's very happy with what she's doing. The only dark cloud for Elizabeth is that she's sad about what's happening with the CFPB.

4:05The Trump administration has dropped the majority of its enforcement actions. Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vogt, is trying to end the agency completely. But this is facing legal action. Elizabeth says she still stays in touch with all her old colleagues on group chats. You can smash the bureau, but we're all going to find each other outside of it. We're in constant communication about how can we attack this from our new position. So, yes, Elizabeth was pretty unhappy with events earlier in the year, even though it led to a pretty good position for her. Stephen, you talked to somebody who felt like he was a real winner from the government changes.

4:43Yeah, at least he was hoping that he was going to be. I wanted to catch up with someone who earlier this year was all in on President Donald Trump's tariffs. Oh, we're jumping. You know, we definitely support it. There's no doubt. We support him 100 % on this issue. That was A.C. Cooper in April, and he fishes for shrimp out of Louisiana. And he said for years, foreign shrimp have flooded the U.S. market and forced many American shrimpers out of business. We spoke not long after Trump's big tariff announcement, and A.C. was happy to see tariffs on countries like India and Vietnam and hoped that would lead to fewer shrimp imports.

5:19Right, less competition. And so did that happen? Well, you know, there were some initial growing pains there. I called AC back up recently, and he said shrimp imports to the U.S. actually went up. The thing is that they dumped so many in here before the tariffs went into effect that they knew what was coming, and they just flooded our country with shrimp. And when they flooded the market, did that plummet the price of shrimp? Yes, it went down a good bit. It's kind of a wild ride for AC this year. I mean, he's a shrimper. He's used to some waves. Okay. But he did say, you know, prices have since started climbing back up, like more than a third higher than they were last year.

5:56And he's still all in on tariffs, even if it's leading to him paying more elsewhere, like, you know, repairs for his boat. We don't mind paying a little more if we make a little more. It's just part of the nature of the beast. Yeah, AC's big message here on tariffs is be patient. He's only been in there a year. Give it a little time. And, you know, we still vacuum 100 percent and think that it's going to turn out for the best. Yeah, and shrimp imports into this country, they're starting to slow down, which is what AC wants to really drive up that price. He's hoping next year tariffs will really help turn around U.S.

6:28shrimping. His one concern, though, is if the Supreme Court declares some of Trump's tariffs illegal before they can really help. As of this recording, there's been no decision yet. Okay, so maybe we don't know for sure whether the tariffs are legal, but you know what is definitely super illegal? I think based on your segment, fraud? Yes, fraud. Okay. My big update is fraud still illegal, I think. So I missed it. I was too busy covering AI. Okay. So I have an update that is almost three years in the making. It involves a startup founder who was charged with fraud in 2023. And we did an episode back then about this case.

7:10The company was called Frank. Do you remember this, Darian? I think it has something to do with student loans. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So for background, Frank was a company founded by an entrepreneur named Charlie Javis. Her startup helped people fill out financial aid paperwork for college. So good memory, Darian. JP Morgan acquired Frank in 2021 for$175 million. But then the bank learned that Charlie Javis had dramatically inflated the number of customers she had. So she went on trial this year and she was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to 85 months in prison. I can imagine the starting in the schoolyard of like inflating the number of friends she thought said she had.

7:51Oh, no. Imaginary friends and contacts on Facebook that were actually bots. Her origin story. It's getting worse and worse. You're like writing a whole screenplay. I love it. And before you like, you know, finish up that screenplay, it sounds like this is not the end of the saga, right? No, because listen to this. In the acquisition deal, Charlie Gavis had a clause that J.P. Morgan would pay her legal fees, you know, in case the deal fell through. And that deal has been applied to her legal fees, plus those of another startup executive in this fraud case. According to Bloomberg, this is costing J.P.

8:24Morgan$128 million, which is almost as much as J.P. Morgan paid to acquire this startup in the first place. Whoa. So maybe if they just said, like, OK, let's just forget this ever happened, we could have saved a lot of court time, lawyer's fees, and J.P. Morgan would have been no worse off, really. I mean, and like she did hire some high profile legal counsel, but it wasn't just, you know, paying the hourly fees or whatever for the lawyers. According to the Wall Street Journal, J.P. Morgan's lawyers say the bank got billed for all these expenses that don't seem like legal fees at all, like luxury hotel upgrades and something called cellulite butter.

9:06That's a skincare product. Cellulite butter. I could have swore I saw this like a New York Times headline where it's like they had to pay her like lunch. I don't think cellulite butter is part of those like lunch charges. You don't eat it, Stephen. You put it on your stretch marks. A spokesman for Charlie Javis told the New York Times that the stuff about the hotels and the skincare was a ridiculous allegation. Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan is trying to get out of paying her legal bills and Charlie Javis is planning to appeal her conviction. So we're going to need a rest of the story for your rest of the story.

9:36I hope so.

9:41Wow. So a case study in why we need to keep following these stories. thanks to both of you for contributing to this rest of the story episode thanks Darian I'm gonna go order some shrimp before it gets uh more expensive again oh I was gonna order cellulite butter uh and I and I have no food related things in my segment oh Darian's starving over there

10:05this episode was produced by Julia Ritchie and Angel Carreras with engineering by Jimmy Keely it was fact-tracked by Sierra Juarez Cake and Cannon edits the show and The Indicator is a production of NPR Hey, it's Darian Woods here. I just want to take a moment to talk about the vital role of public media. It was founded to provide news and information to everybody for free, regardless of anybody's ability to pay. We still believe in the mission of public media at NPR. But as of this fall, federal funding for public media, including NPR and local NPR stations, has been eliminated. Despite that, we remain committed to this work, to go beyond the headlines to show you how the economy affects your life.

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