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Originally posted by Rey HRH:
Fun fact: Elizabeth’s dad was a Vice President in Enron.

Probably one of hundreds.

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Originally posted by rscalzo:

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Elizabeth Holmes,

It took a secret investigation by the Wall Street Journal to uncover the fraud associated with her process of blood testing. Why didn't the FDA find out long before this point?

You appear to be under the misapprehension that the FDA's mission is to protect consumers.

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Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by rscalzo:
It took a secret investigation by the Wall Street Journal to uncover the fraud associated with her process of blood testing. Why didn't the FDA find out long before this point?

You appear to be under the misapprehension that the FDA's mission is to protect consumers.

All the FDA can do is check paperwork - make sure no white outs, every line that should have data has data, that every data recorded meets the acceptable range for that data, every signature line has a signature, every signature is on an approved list with each person's paperwork that shows they've been trained and qualified to sign what they're supposed to sign, that every document used was approved and up to date on the day it was used.

It's not like the FDA can figure out the data was bogus if it was faked unless who ever faked the data was a third grader who puts the same exact number in every place.

A federal jury convicted the Theranos founder, who claimed to revolutionize blood testing, on four of 11 charges for a yearslong fraud scheme, which ended up as one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious implosions. Each count carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.

LINK:https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-elizabeth-holmes-verdict-theranos-founder-is-guilty-on-four-of-11-charges-in-fraud-trial-116

Additional information from WSJ:
SAN JOSE, Calif.— A federal jury convicted Elizabeth Holmes, the startup founder who claimed to revolutionize blood testing, on four of 11 charges for a yearslong fraud scheme while running Theranos Inc., which ended up as one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious implosions.

The verdict caps a steep fall for the former Silicon Valley star who once graced magazine covers with headlines such as “This CEO is Out for Blood” and emulated Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs by wearing black turtlenecks.

At the 15-week trial, Ms. Holmes testified in her own defense, showing regret for missteps and saying she never intended to mislead anyone. She accused her former boyfriend and deputy at Theranos of abusing her, allegations he has denied.

Ms. Holmes was charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud under an indictment brought 3 ½ years ago.



She was found guilty on three of the nine fraud counts and one of two conspiracy counts. She was acquitted on four counts related to defrauding patients—one charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three charges of wire fraud.

The jury failed to reach a verdict on three counts, after saying earlier Monday it was having difficulty reaching consensus on three of the charges.

Prosecutors can choose to pursue a new trial on the undecided counts. The timing of any new action by the U.S. against Ms. Holmes would likely be affected by an upcoming trial of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Ms. Holmes’s former boyfriend and deputy at Theranos who faces similar charges of defrauding investors and patients about the startup’s blood-testing capabilities, which he denies.

Prosecutors had to prove she intended to defraud investors and patients, seeking a financial windfall. Ms. Holmes countered with testimony saying she made innocent mistakes and believed that Theranos’s blood-testing technology was showing signs of success.

PHOTOS: The Testimony of Elizabeth Holmes: Regret, Revelations and Deflections
VIEW PHOTOS
PETER DASILVA/REUTERS
​The jury wasn’t fully convinced by testimony from investors who testified they had lost money after buying into Ms. Holmes’s vision. Some said they had invested even after Ms. Holmes rebuffed their requests for more information, which defense lawyers said showed negligence on their part. The 37-year-old Ms. Holmes could face up to 20 years in prison for each count for which she was found guilty, but former prosecutors said such a stiff sentence is rare in white-collar fraud cases. That Ms. Holmes was acquitted of any charges likely lessens the overall penalty she will face, former prosecutors said. Sentencing will follow.

Testimony from the three patients who received what they called false test results was limited, and the role of their healthcare providers in ordering and interpreting their tests may have also tripped up jurors, legal experts say.

The U.S. government, in a rare fraud prosecution of a technology executive, essentially put on trial Silicon Valley’s fake-it-until-you-make-it culture. In Theranos’s case, prosecutors said Ms. Holmes’s hype and hubris went far beyond norms, exposing patients and investors to harm by peddling faulty technology. It was one of the most high-profile white-collar criminal trials in years.

“She chose to be dishonest with her investors and with patients,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Schenk said of Ms. Holmes in his closing arguments to the jury. “That choice was not only callous, it was criminal.”

The mixed verdict, by a jury of four women and eight men, put a punctuation mark on a scandal that surfaced with a series of Wall Street Journal articles in 2015 and 2016 that called into question Theranos’s proprietary blood-testing technology.

In 2018, Ms. Holmes settled separate civil securities-fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission; she paid a $500,000 penalty and was banned from being an officer or director of any public company for 10 years, without admitting or denying the allegations.

Theranos rose nearly two decades ago out of an idea Ms. Holmes dreamed up as a 19-year-old student at Stanford University. She sought to upend the blood-testing business by developing technology that tested for a range of health conditions with just a few drops of blood from a finger prick, eliminating the need for large needles and vials of blood.

Ms. Holmes recruited a star-studded board of Washington insiders, including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, who knew little about healthcare but were drawn in by her vision and conviction about Theranos’s prospects. The board lent the company prestige and helped attract high-profile investors.

At its peak, investors valued Theranos at more than $9 billion, the 10th largest among venture-capital-backed startup companies. Ms. Holmes owned half of it, with a paper value of around $4.5 billion, she testified during her trial. The company employed hundreds of scientists, engineers and marketers, and Ms. Holmes claimed it could cheaply and quickly run more than 200 health tests using a proprietary device. In a partnership, Theranos offered the tests at Walgreens pharmacies.

The trial showed a different reality. The company managed to use its proprietary finger-prick blood-testing device for just 12 types of patient tests. Those results were unreliable. At its lab, Theranos secretly ran most of its blood tests on commercial devices from other companies, including some that Theranos altered to work with tiny blood samples.

In her testimony, Ms. Holmes repeatedly said she had regret for some of her business decisions: “There are many things that I wish I did differently,” she said on the witness stand.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...s-in-fraud-trial-116
Probably a Paywall.

READ: HISTORY OF THE WSJ THERANOS INVESTIGATION

Just a reminder that a certain former Secretary of Defense was on the Theranos board & wanted DOD to use Theranos' "tech".

I read about "Theranos" and Elizabeth Holmes quite a while ago. The whole thing was a fraud.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech...raud-and-conspiracy/

At Theranos’ height, Holmes had amassed a fortune of $4.5 billion on paper and was lionized as a visionary in glowing media coverage that included a famous cover story in Forbes magazine and a profile in the New Yorker.

Holmes’ rise to power was abetted by glowing media coverage and bolstered by the reputations of the board of directors she assembled.

Theranos’ board members were a who’s who of political and military power players. Their numbers included former U.S. Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn, former Navy admiral Gary Roughead, and former Defense Secretary and four-star general James Mattis, all of whom sang Holmes’ praises before her fall from grace.

George Shultz told Parloff, “Everywhere you look with this young lady, there’s a purity of motivation. I mean she really is trying to make the world better, and this is her way of doing it.”

Mattis told Parloff that Holmes “has probably one of the most mature and well-honed sense of ethics—personal ethics, managerial ethics, business ethics, medical ethics that I’ve ever heard articulated.”

Holmes was also celebrated by the Obama administration during her rise to fame. Then-Vice President Joe Biden toured the Theranos lab in Newark, California, in 2015, praising Holmes for “empowering people” to “take control of their own health.”

“This is inspiration,” Biden reportedly said at the time. “It is amazing to me, Elizabeth, what you’ve been able to do. What’s most impressive to me is you’re not only making these lab tests more accessible … empowering people whether they live in the barrio or a mansion, putting them in a position to help take control of their own health.”

In April 2015, the Obama White House invited Holmes to the state dinner for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

President Obama named Holmes as a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship in July 2015.

The reporters should be asked to respond to their quotes. Mattis praising her ethics. Great judge of character he is. One of her professors at Stanford knew she was a fraud from the get go. This was before she started Theranos.

They wont throw the full meal deal sentence at her. I'm hoping she gets at least 10-15 years and will do between 7-10 years of actual time but doubt it.

She's got crazy eyes so she may only do 2 years before talking to herself in the mirror and call herself 'Cruella'.

No parole for federal convicts. Maybe a small % off for good behavior. She'll do the vast majority of what she gets.

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Originally posted by 2PAK:
They wont throw the full meal deal sentence at her. I'm hoping she gets at least 10-15 years and will do between 7-10 years of actual time but doubt it.

She's got crazy eyes so she may only do 2 years before talking to herself in the mirror and call herself 'Cruella'.

This story isn't over. I believe she squirreled away some money. She was smart enough to scam venture capitalists and investors so she knows how to game the system.
I get it, the company is worth zero and she will be sued in civil court. However, I predict she will disappear after serving her sentence. She was worth $9 billion, even 1% of that figure would set her in fine style.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I doubt she has money squirreled away. Most of the nine billion was in now worthless stock. Her attorneys that were handling the civil suits for her flat out quit because they were not being paid.
Her boyfriend now husband is the heir to a hotel empire that is worth millions. Its Federal time and you have to serve the entirety of your sentence.

yes, but there is always a way... like a pardon from a president.

I think that's what they said about Bernie Madoff. He died in prison.

She has no influence or constituency. No one's going to lobby for a pardon for her. There's no political benefit to the current or any future president to let her out.

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Originally posted by Blume9mm:
yes, but there is always a way... like a pardon from a president.

No one will be pardoning this broad.

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Its Federal time and you have to serve the entirety of your sentence.

3/4 minimum before parole

^^^^^^^^
Correct

85%

Okay, ~85% will be served. Now, lets hope she gets at least 10 years.

I wonder at some point if her attorneys advised her to go for and to take a plea deal and, what that deal (years) would have been vs going to trial with the teary end run of 'my boyfriend (at the time) was controlling me and made me do it..

Chances are sentencing will be in 6 months and she will be free until then. An appeal is for certain and may or may not allow her to stay out of jail until the appeal is heard.