Leach tried eliciting testimony to emphasize that, even though investors said Theranos had led them to believe it had a contract with the U.S. Holmes knew she was making deceptive claims about Theranos’s technology. Leach used repetition on Tuesday to hammer home a point during cross-examination: Ms. Holmes said, seeming startled at the abrupt ending. She can appeal the conviction, her sentence or both. Holmes wasn’t a creature of Silicon Valley, or so the refrain went. Here are five takeaways from the verdict. Key Takeaways : Few tech executives are charged with fraud and even fewer are convicted.Holmes’s Epic Rise and Fall : Silicon Valley’s philosophy of “fake it until you make it” finally got its comeuppance.
#ELIZABETH HOLMES TODAY TRIAL#
Understand the Elizabeth Holmes Trial Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, was found guilty of four counts of fraud in a case that came to symbolize the pitfalls of Silicon Valley’s culture of hustle, hype and greed. She is set to be sentenced on Sept. They weren’t interested in today or tomorrow or next month, they were interested in what kind of change we could make.”
“I wanted to talk about what this company could do a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. “I wanted to convey the impact,” she said, describing the things she told investors, patients and the press about Theranos. Holmes concluded one portion of testimony with a mini speech about her intentions that harkened to her time delivering TED Talks and fireside chats as a business luminary. But she had thought everything she knew about Theranos was true. Yes, she acknowledged, she had previously testified that as Theranos’s chief executive, the “buck” stopped with her and any problems were ultimately her responsibility.
Any information she shared about Theranos, she said, came from experts inside the company. Holmes’s final day on the stand on Wednesday, she reiterated her main argument: She never meant to deceive anyone. Holmes’s lawyer, has painted his client as a well-meaning entrepreneur whose actions to protect her company were twisted by prosecutors as fraud. She largely blamed others, said she was a true believer of Theranos’s technology and posited that her decisions were misunderstood. Holmes and Theranos had falsified reports, concealed the use of third-party blood testing devices, faked technology demonstrations and exaggerated the company’s marketing claims. Holmes’s trial, prosecutors called 29 witnesses.
But a 2015 investigation by The Wall Street Journal revealed that Theranos’s blood-testing technology did not work, and the start-up unraveled. Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from investors and was heralded as the next Steve Jobs. She has pleaded not guilty.īefore Theranos collapsed, it was a Silicon Valley darling that promised to revolutionize health care through cheaper, simpler blood tests that took only a few drops of blood. Holmes faces 11 charges of defrauding patients, doctors and investors by lying to them about Theranos’s technology and business relationships. Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, ended her testimony on Wednesday in a fraud trial that has been billed as a test of start-up hubris and hype.