Elizabeth Holmes was once one of the most successful people in the world. Dubbed the ‘female Steve Jobs’, the Stanford University drop out founded a company that could detect cancer and diabetes without needles. Silicon Valley tycoons and other capitalists from around the world flocked to invest and by 2014 her company Theranos was worth $9billion.
A year later, a Wall Street Journal investigation interrogated the authenticity of the science behind Holmes’ blood-testing technology. By 2018, Theranos had been shut down and Holmes outed as a fake. It was a lofty ascension and a rapid decline.
A trial has since found Holmes guilty of four counts of fraud, which carries a maximum prison sentence of two decades. Assistant US Attorney Jeffrey Schenk told the jury: 'She chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest with investors and patients… That choice was not only callous— it was criminal.'
Who Is Elizabeth Holmes?
Raised in Washington DC, Holmes was the daughter of two bureaucrats on Capitol Hill. Her neighbour, Richard Fuizz, 81, told BBC reporters her family ‘were very interested in status’ and ‘lived for connections’. He explained Holmes came from a line of inventors and that her great great grandfather founded Fleischmann’s Yeast, which revolutionised the bread industry.
Aged just nine-years-old, Holmes wrote a letter to her father saying: ‘What I really want out of life is to discover something new, something that mankind didn’t know was possible to do.’
Why did she drop out of Stanford University?
Holmes began studying chemical engineering at Stanford University in 2002 where she first thought of a patch that could scan a patient for diseases and release antibiotics to cure them. She was told by her professors that her invention wouldn’t work. Yet, she dropped out of the college after her first year to launch the company and quickly began to gather interest from investors.
How much money did Holmes make?
Some of the richest people in the world put their money behind Holmes’ invention. Among them were America’s richest family the Waltons, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and US Treasury Secretary George Schultz. The business raised more than $900million, established deals with Walgreens and Safeway supermarkets, and left Holmes with an estimated fortune of $4.5billion.
What crime did Holmes commit?
After Theranos was dissolved in 2018, Holmes settled charges that she’d fraudulently raised $700million from investors. But three months later she was arrested with eleven different charges of fraud and conspiracy to fraud.
According to the prosecution, Holmes knowingly deceived patients about their blood tests and amplified Theranos’ achievements to investors. She has now been convicted for four counts of fraud, was found not guilty on a further four counts, and the jury failed to reach a verdict on the final three charges.
What will happen to Holmes now?
Holmes was not taken into custody after the verdict was reached and no date has been confirmed for her sentencing. But her downfall has been so hypnotising it has already spawned multiple on-screen adaptations including a HBO documentary: The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley, a drama series starring Amanda Seyfried called The Dropout, and a biopic film called Bad Blood starring Jennifer Lawrence.
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