by Nahlah Abdur-Rahman
April 30, 2026
Chris Grey claims Sallie Mae went again on guarantees concerning knowledge privateness.
The founding father of Scholly, a scholarship search startup, has sued its acquirer Sallie Mae, over what he deems an illegal sharing of consumer knowledge.
Chris Grey bought the net useful resource to the banking company in 2023, however the transition has seemingly shut Grey out the C-suite, main him to take authorized motion.
Grey catapulted Scholly to hundreds of thousands of customers by serving to college students uncover scholarship alternatives. The corporate gained publicity via his look on Shark Tank in 2015, the place sharks Daymond John and Lori Greiner provided him an funding deal.
He bought the startup to the scholar mortgage big for an undisclosed sum, hoping the acquisition would propel Scholly’s enlargement. Whereas some noticed the deal as Grey “promoting out,” particularly as a Black founder, he countered the backlash by noting the rarity for Black-owned entities to achieve a degree of success for personal acquisition.
The phrases of the buyout positioned Grey right into a vice presidential function at Sallie Mae, the place he provided artistic enter into Scholly’s scaling of operations.
Now, he has a filed a lawsuit in opposition to the company in addition to a whistleblower grievance to the Securities and Change Fee. In accordance with a evaluate of the filings by TechCrunch, Grey claims Sallie Mae not solely laid him off, but additionally his co-founders, whereas reneging on guarantees to safeguard customers’ private data.
“I bought Scholly to a regulated financial institution as a result of I believed it will defend the scholars who trusted us,” Grey informed the publication. “As a substitute, I watched the corporate construct a non-bank subsidiary to do issues the financial institution itself can’t legally do: promote pupil knowledge. That’s not the corporate I assumed I used to be becoming a member of.”
Grey alleges that when he spoke out concerning the knowledge privateness issues, management at Sallie Mae eradicated his function. He stated the company bypassed federal restrictions on monetary establishments promoting buyer knowledge by putting Scholly right into a subsidiary referred to as “Sallie.”
Grey created Scholly to assist college students supply applications the place they match the factors to use. Grey claimed the enterprise, even with its “freemium” method adopted post-Shark Tank, grew to 5 million customers with $30 million in cumulative income.
On its web site, Sallie publicly states the promoting of consumer knowledge to 3rd events, together with customers’ schooling data, geolocation knowledge, age, race and make contact with data. The subsidiary additionally receives a payout from Sallie Mae “for the referral of pupil mortgage clients.” Grey alleges that Sallie Mae used this knowledge to create Backpack media, a useful resource that gives entry to “extremely fascinating, laborious to achieve audiences,” notably youthful era, to affect their shopping for decisions.
“Whereas we don’t touch upon pending litigation, it’s unlucky a former worker is making false accusations about our firm following his departure almost two years in the past,” Rick Castellano, Sallie Mae’s vp of company communications, wrote in a press release to TechCrunch. “We plan to vigorously defend ourselves in opposition to these claims that are with out benefit or substance.”
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