Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty of Defrauding Investors

Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison.

In California, jurors found entrepreneur and founder of the biotech startup Theranos Elizabeth Holmes guilty of defrauding investors. This is reported by CNN. 

The jury found Holmes guilty on four of the 11 counts of the indictment. The startup founder faces up to 20 years in prison, but a lawyer believes she is unlikely to receive the maximum possible sentence. Holmes also faces a fine totaling $1 million. 

Elizabeth was acquitted on four counts related to defrauding patients. On three counts of defrauding investors, the jury could not reach a unanimous decision. These episodes may be considered in a new trial. 

For many years, the startup Theranos developed a universal device that, according to its creators, was supposed to diagnose a disease from a single drop of blood. 

However, according to the prosecution, the device turned out to be a fake, and the company's head Holmes knowingly deceived the project's investors. 

Among Theranos investors were well-known American politicians and businessmen, for example, former President Bill Clinton, Secretary of Education under the Trump administration Betsy DeVos, media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and others. 

The company's board of directors included former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, as well as former Pentagon chief James Mattis. Joe Biden, who was vice president in the Barack Obama administration at the time, also showed interest in the startup. 

However, in 2015 Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published a series of articles about the company's activities. He was drawn to the particular secrecy surrounding Theranos. He conducted his investigation over several years and as a result was able to prove that the startup's technology was a fraud. 

Under conditions of strict secrecy, he met with several company employees, some of whom had already left their positions by that point. According to the journalist, all of them were frightened. 

Their accounts painted a picture of a terrible atmosphere, in which people were literally forced into falsifying data, under threat of dismissal on terms that would mean ruin. In 2018, the journalist published the book “Bad Blood,” which became a bestseller, and later Elizabeth Holmes's story attracted the attention of filmmakers. 

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003. In 2015 it emerged that the technology did not work, that Theranos was secretly running blood tests on other companies' equipment, and that their results were distorted. In 2018 Theranos was liquidated, and in 2021 the entrepreneur went on trial.