The end of the Steve Jobs story in a skirt? Elizabeth Holmes faces charges.
Elizabeth was considered by many to be a symbol of female strength and the power of innovation. The whole world watched in astonishment at her bold business actions, while behind the scenes all hell was going on. The Theranos government was consumed by cash corrosion and employees were consumed by psychosis. A federal court in San Jose found that gAn enial fraudster with charismatic eyes is guilty of at least four of the 11 counts she was charged with.
Elizabeth Holmes is an ex-Stanford chemical engineering student who dropped out of college in 2003 and founded Theranos, a company she devoted the next 10 years to developing a method for painlessly collecting and testing blood extracted from a fingertip puncture. In 2016, Forbes magazine named her the world’s youngest female billionaire, and Theranos was taking its toll. Komputer Świat reports that at the height of the company’s popularity, the market valued it at the equivalent of 77 billion.
As they write in Interia, in September 2020, the spotlight was illuminated by reports of a possible line of defense by Theranos’ owner. The case file included a court document in which records indicated that Elizabeth would plead guilty to mental illness. Less than a year later, in August 2021, another dossier detailed different rhetoric. The unsealed court documents showed Ms. Holmes’ intent to shrug off the liability and put herself in the role of the victim. The documents recorded that the accused would most likely take advantage of being from a relationship with one of Theranos’ CEOs, Ramesh Balwani. According to the story, she was to be manipulated and abused, and Balwanii was to be the perpetrator of a decade-long nightmare that was described as a relationship. This thread will still be examined by judicial authorities.
Holmes convicted!
In 2018, Elizabeth Holmes faced charges of years of embezzlement and investor manipulation. In this situation, the Securities and Exchange Commission negotiated a settlement. Holmes agreed to give up control of the company, shares worth $19 million and $500,000. $77 billion in fines. She was banned from holding executive positions in publicly traded companies until 2028.
Business Insider reports that the jury found the businesswoman guilty of conspiracy to defraud and embezzling nearly $50 million. A court has indicted her on four charges, a jury has cleared her of four others, and no consensus has yet been reached on the rest. The sentence was the result of a three-month federal trial in San Jose.
– Holmes is a warning to us all. We are constantly on the lookout for stories that describe great people achieving spectacular success. Sometimes we get carried away by such visionaries ourselves, without looking at their actual accomplishments – said Alex Gibney in an interview with Peter Kafka on the Recode Media podcast.
George Demos, a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney and adjunct professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, called the verdict of the trial „A significant government victory and sends a powerful signal to Silicon Valley that fraud cannot pretend to be innovation”.