Charlie Javice says JPMorgan is trying to use 'red tape' to avoid paying her legal bill of $3.8 million and growing

• JPMorgan and prosecutors claim Charlie Javice fraudulently inflated the value of her startup.
• But JPMorgan was ordered to pay her legal fees – totaling almost $3.8 million, new filings show.
• The bank has made bogus objections to paying $835,000 of that amount, her lawyers say.

Lawyers for indicted startup founder Charlie Javice say JPMorgan Chase is defying a court order to pay almost a fifth of the nearly $3.8 million in legal bills they've racked up.

JPMorgan agreed to pay $175 million to acquire Javice's student-aid startup Frank, but sued her earlier this year and convinced federal prosecutors to charge her criminally. They say Javice and fellow executive Olivier Amar fabricated profiles for millions of users.

But a Delaware judge said JPMorgan still had to honor its commitment to advance Javice's legal fees under agreements it made when it acquired Frank. And in filings made public Wednesday, lawyers for Javice at the high-end law firms Abrams & Bayliss and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan said the bank was dragging its feet.

"JPMorgan continues its campaign to hobble Javice's defense by refusing to advance reasonable defense costs and, in doing so, has directly contradicted both the letter and the spirit of the law," the lawyers wrote, accusing the bank of trying to insert "red tape" that wasn't in the court's order.

The bank's unpaid tab totals more than $835,000, Javice's lawyers claimed, amounting to about 22% of the total amount they've sought. That would mean they've billed nearly $3.8 million.

That kind of eye-watering bill isn't unusual for a complex investigation involving large law firms whose top lawyers often charge over $2,000 an hour. But every dollar increases the sting for JPMorgan.

Michael Barlow, one of Javice's lawyers, said in a court filing that they've billed JPMorgan for fees racked up in the bank's internal investigation when she was represented by the firm Mintz Levin; in federal civil suits brought against her by the bank and the Securities and Exchange Commission; in her criminal prosecution; and in the action itself.

The bank's objections fall into four buckets, according to Javice's lawyers — most of it for legal work which JPMorgan says it wasn't obligated to pay, and some of it for amounts they deemed vague or "suspicious."

JPMorgan declined to comment when contacted by Insider.