Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of criminal fraud for her role in Theranos, a $ 9 billion company that collapsed following a scandal. She is accused of lying and deceiving Theranos investors and clients for years, promising them a blood testing technology that could have revolutionized healthcare, but was never developed.
A jury in San Jose, California delivered the verdict after hearing three months of even shocking testimony. The 37-year-old will face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, although she will likely be able to get some discounts. Holmes will probably appeal and upon reading the sentence in the courtroom she remained perfectly still looking directly at the jurors while they were being questioned by the judge.
Holmes was convicted on four of the 11 counts of conspiracy and computer fraud and acquitted on another four.
Who is Elizabeth Holmes
From CEO star to criminal, Elizabeth Holmes’ story represents one of the most dramatic descents in Silicon Valley history. After deliberating for seven full days, jurors agreed with prosecutors that Holmes had been lying to investors for several years about the accuracy and capabilities of the Theranos blood analyzers.
A parade of witnesses told jurors that they were badly deceived by the businesswoman. From the executives of Walgreens and Safeway Inc. to James Mattis, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense who served on the board of Theranos, as well as the investor advisers who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the company all would be duped by the Holmes.
The committee of eight men and four women also heard colorful reports from several Theranos employees that the company’s lab took dangerous shortcuts to hide analyzer flaws, and from patients who reported receiving inaccurate results that left them anxious about their health.
The most shocking moments in the classroom were when Holmes testified that she was raped as a student at Stanford University and suffered years of verbal and sexual abuse from her ex-boyfriend, former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny”. Balwani. According to Holmes’ account, the abuse lasted throughout her ten-year relationship with Balwani which had a profound, if incalculable, influence on her life. His legal team’s decision not to call a relationship trauma psychiatrist as a witness left the jurors to consider the testimony in their decision.
Holmes’ defense team tried to convince the jury that she made a sincere effort for 15 years to bring Theranos to success and shouldn’t be punished for not achieving her dream. “Elizabeth Holmes was building a business and not a criminal enterprise,” attorney Kevin Downey told jurors.
In 2015 Holmes was defined by Forbes as the youngest self-made billionaire woman and he was embellishing the magazine covers. But that same year, the Wall Street Journal released reports indicating flaws in Theranos technology, which led regulators the following year to conclude that the machines posed a health hazard to patients.