Charlie Javice just got sentenced for defrauding JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million with her Frank start-up. Her punishment? A few years in prison, a fine that barely dents the damage, and the subtle undertone of this was a mistake, not a crime. She’ll serve her time, likely write a book, and return to a venture capital circuit still ready to forgive and invest in her. Because that’s how the game works when you fit the mold.

Now let’s strip away the corporate spin and ask: who else could have pulled this off? Who else would have been given the benefit of the doubt?

If you’re a Black woman founder, an Indigenous entrepreneur, a queer immigrant hustling for capital — you don’t even get in the room. You don’t get JPMorgan execs entertaining your deck. You don’t get $175 million wired to your account because you “seem visionary.” What you get is endless due diligence. What you get are funders combing through your life like you’re on trial before you even sign a term sheet. USA Today data shows Black women founders receive less than 1% of venture capital funding. What you get is skepticism so baked in that it feels like policy.

Charlie lied. She inflated numbers. She fabricated a scale. And the machine still ran her check. Let’s be clear: it wasn’t because her idea was so compelling. It was because she looked like the kind of person you’re supposed to trust — white, educated, well-networked, polished in all the right ways. Venture capital and banking circles don’t just manage risk, they reproduce bias.

If this had been a young Black founder pushing a scholarship-access start-up, they wouldn’t have been on JPMorgan’s acquisition list. Period. The same system that bought Charlie’s lies forces other founders to bleed for scraps, to prove themselves a thousand times over, to accept under-valuation as the only ticket in. Reports by ProjectDiane have shown for years how Black and Latina women founders are systematically underfunded.

And Canada is no different. A 2022 Canadian Venture Capital Association report showed that less than 3% of venture capital (VC) funding went to companies with a woman founder. For Black founders specifically, the numbers are microscopic: according to research by Pitch Better, Black women entrepreneurs in Canada receive 0.003% of venture funding despite being one of the fastest-growing demographics of business owners. Indigenous founders face similar exclusion, with systemic barriers that keep them locked out of capital streams, forcing reliance on microloans and community finance instead of equity investment.

The hypocrisy is brutal. Charlie Javice will become a cautionary tale but not an exile. Meanwhile, entire communities have to fight for the baseline respect she was handed on arrival. This isn’t just about fraud — it’s about the ongoing fraudulence of a financial system that rewards privilege and punishes difference. A system that can absorb a $175 million “oops” from the right kind of founder, but won’t risk $175,000 on the wrong kind.

The contrast in Canada is stark. Pitch Better’s FoundHers Report (2021) highlighted that while ventures like Sheertex, a Montreal-based start-up, raised millions in venture capital, Black women-led businesses with equal or greater traction were shut out. Investors told them their markets were “too small,” only to fund white-led competitors with near-identical models. The same report found that 0.003% of Canadian VC goes to Black women entrepreneurs.

And then there’s BKR Capital — Canada’s first Black-led VC firm — founded in 2021 because traditional funds simply weren’t backing Black entrepreneurs. Its very existence proves how systemic the exclusion is: entire firms had to be created just to carve out space where none was offered.

Indigenous entrepreneurs face similar barriers. According to the National Aboriginal Capital Corporations Association (NACCA), Indigenous businesses in Canada remain significantly underfunded compared to non-Indigenous peers, with systemic gaps in access to equity capital and banking relationships. Despite Indigenous businesses contributing more than $30 billion annually to the economy, they receive disproportionately little VC or institutional investment.

Raw truth? The system was designed this way. And until we tear down the unspoken codes of who gets trust and who gets audited, we’ll keep seeing Charlies cash out while everyone else hustles for crumbs.