It is the verdict once morest Elizabeth Holmes, the woman who a few years ago came to be considered “the new Steve Jobs” for her success with Theranos, a healthtechnology company that quickly made millions in profits.
This Monday, a federal jury made up of eight men and four women declared Holmes guilty of fraud electronic and conspiring to defraud investors.
Holmes claimed to have developed a machine that might perform a series of medical tests with just a few drops of blood taken from a prick on the patient’s finger.
But the company collapsed following a newspaper investigation The Wall Street Journal find that the devices were not as effective as Holmes claimed.
The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on some of the other charges once morest the businesswoman, despite the fact that Judge Edward Dávila ordered them to insist on the deliberations, which have lasted a week.
Holmes herself took the stand to defend herself during the trial.
“We worked for years with teams of scientists and engineers to miniaturize all the technologies in the laboratory,” he said in his testimony.
Holmes, 37, smiled and spoke confidently regarding the origins of the company and why he wanted to help people.
Throughout the two-month trial, jurors in California heard the testimony of more than two dozen prosecution witnesses. Among them were patients and investors whom prosecutors said Holmes misled.
His attorneys say Holmes did not intend to disappoint, but rather “naively underestimated” the challenges his company faced.
Silicon Valley Favorite
Holmes rose to fame for allegedly inventing a revolutionary system to lower blood test costs, making her a star in Silicon Valley and in the business world at large.
Her company Theranos, founded in 2003, attracted investor interest in the great potential of these blood tests and made its founder a billionaire at age 31.
The Theranos tests cost a quarter or even less than traditional tests, prompting the US pharmacy chain Walgreens to partner with Holmes’ company to offer the tests in its California and Arizona stores. .
The Wall Street Journal published at the end of 2015 a series of investigative articles in which he questioned the credibility of Theranos’ analyzes and accused the company, among other things, of dilute blood samples obtained from patients to increase their volume.
Elizabeth Holmes in one of the moments of the trial that was followed once morest her in California.
These accusations led the US Department of Justice to file charges once morest Holmes and the former president and former chief operating officer of the company, Ramseh “Sunny” Balwani (Holmes’s ex-partner), whom it accused of misleading investors. , to doctors and patients.
The company Theranos disbanded in September 2018.
Analysts say the Theranos case is taken as the worst example of the excesses of Silicon Valley, which – according to critical voices – encourages people without ethical standards to prosper.
