Convicted of fraud and facing the possibility of decades in prison, Charlie Javice was concerned about how a monitoring device would affect her job.
A striking and headline-making fraud case resulted in a conviction last Friday, when Charlie Javice was found guilty in federal court of conning JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million. The bank has also sued Ms. Javice, a 32-year-old entrepreneur who once made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, for elaborately falsifying her student-finance start-up’s customer list.
But in a Manhattan courthouse hearing this week, the deliberations about Ms. Javice’s bail terms turned into an absurdist episode, as her legal team argued that an order for her to wear an ankle monitor would hinder her ability to teach Pilates.
Her lawyer, Ronald Sullivan, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proceedings, stood at a podium and waved his arms to demonstrate the physicality needed to practice Pilates, which Ms. Javice teaches professionally in South Florida, sometimes leading three to four classes a day.
“To have your legs in the air and the monitor going up and down on your leg, it is a significant encumbrance,” Mr. Sullivan said, also noting that the monitor “would remove the possibility of the one thing she can now do, which is teach her classes.”
The hearing’s focus on the bulky surveillance device was another case of ankle monitors taking space within the news and pop culture sphere. Anna Delvey, the fake heiress convicted of theft and larceny, wore a bedazzled ankle monitor on “Dancing With the Stars” last year, and an ankle monitor appears regularly in the medical drama “The Pitt,” worn by a resident named Cassie McKay, who drilled through hers in a recent episode to halt its blaring alarm.