It is known that every year, Forbes releases a list of 30 notable individuals under 30 years old across different industries to honor their outstanding achievements and trailblazing innovations.
However, with a great feature list comes disappointing slip-ups. Here are some “notable” individuals who entered the 30 under 30 lists but turned out to be remarkably shady criminals:
Charlie Javice
Starting with the latest one to be indicted. Charlie Javice, the founder and former CEO of Frank, a student financial aid application assistance company. Javice was on 2019’s 30 Under 30 list for finance for her creation of Frank’s software, which aims to make the student loan application process faster and easier.
On April 4, she was charged by the justice department for “falsely and dramatically inflating the number of customers of her company,” which made the largest bank in the US, JPMorgan Chase, buy her company for $175 million in 2021.
Separate counts of conspiracy to commit security, wire, and bank fraud have been brought against her, which could cost her decades in prison, which she denied.
Sam Bankman-Fried
Self-proclaimed “effective altruist,” Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of the crypto exchange FTX, is also one that has fallen from grace in Forbes’ lists. Bankman-Fried is part of 2021’s 30 Under 30 list for Finance, Crypto Rich List at #2, Forbes 400 (richest person in America) landing at #44, and the Billionaires List at #60.
Bankman-Fried, who is currently under house arrest, is facing a variety of charges, ranging from bribery to money laundering to making unlawful political contributions, and is expected to face more than 100 years in prison.
Martin Shkreli
Another ‘notable’ individual that comes from 30 Under 30 is Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli, who made the list in 2012, also in the Finance category. Shkreli served seven years in prison for increasing the price of a single-pill prescription of Daraprim from $12.50 to $750 while serving as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
He was then prohibited from working in the pharmaceutical sector for the rest of his life.
Elizabeth Holmes
And for the unhonorable mention, the infamous Theranos fraudster, whose revolutionary blood-testing startup turned out to be a case of fraud, involving false or deceptive statements regarding the precision of the company’s blood-testing technology.
Holmes was convicted on four counts of defrauding investors and was expected to serve 11 years in prison.
She might not have been officially part of the 30 Under 30 list, but she was invited to speak at the ‘Under 30’ summit in 2015 and was given the ‘Under 30 Doers Award,’ making her part of our list.
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