Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty of Criminal Fraud

Описание: Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of criminal fraud for her role building the blood-testing startup Theranos into a $9 billion company that collapsed in scandal.

A jury in San Jose, California, returned the verdict after hearing three months of testimony that was often technical, heavily contested and, from Holmes herself, shocking. The 37-year-old faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, although she’ll probably get far less than that. Holmes will also likely appeal her conviction and any sentence she gets.

Holmes, wearing a mask in the courtroom as everyone else did, stayed perfectly still and upright while the verdict was read. She looked directly at the jurors as they were polled by the judge to determine if the verdict matched their conclusions. There was little reaction in the courtroom to the verdict, beyond the sound of fluttering of keyboards from the press. Holmes’s partner Billy Evans, her mother and father sat still in the front row.

Holmes was convicted of four out of 11 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud and acquitted of four counts. The jury didn’t reach a verdict on three of the counts. Holmes was found not guilty of all charges pertaining to defrauding patients.

“The jurors in this 15-week trial navigated a complex case amid a pandemic and scheduling obstacles,” San Francisco U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said in a statement. “The guilty verdicts in this case reflect Ms. Holmes’s culpability in this large-scale investor fraud and she must now face sentencing for her crimes.”

Holmes’s fall from her status as celebrity chief executive to convicted felon marks one of the most dramatic descents in Silicon Valley history. After deliberating for seven full days, jurors agreed Monday with prosecutors that Holmes lied to investors over several years about the accuracy and capabilities of Theranos blood analyzers.

A parade of witnesses told jurors they were gravely misled by the Stanford University dropout-turned-entrepreneur. They ranged from executives at Walgreens and Safeway Inc. to James Mattis, the former U.S. secretary of defense who served on the Theranos board, as well as advisers to investors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the company.

The panel of eight men and four women also heard colorful accounts from several Theranos employees about the company’s lab taking dangerous shortcuts to conceal shortcomings with the analyzers, and from patients who recounted receiving inaccurate test results that left them anxious about their health.

As was the case with the fate of Theranos itself, Holmes’s defense was tethered to her charisma and credibility. She made the risky decision, unusual in white-collar criminal cases, to testify in her own defense.

The move gave Holmes the final voice in the long trial -- and served to dampen the testimony of dozens of government witnesses before her -- but also forced her to make uncomfortable admissions during a grueling cross-examination.

In seven days on the witness stand, Holmes alternated between deflecting blame, failing to remember certain events and accepting responsibility for mistakes, even while insisting she didn’t intend to deceive anyone.

The most jolting moments in the courtroom were when Holmes testified she was raped as a student at Stanford University and suffered years of verbal and sexual abuse from her former boyfriend, former Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

By Holmes’s account, the abuse lasted throughout the decade-long relationship with Balwani and had a profound if incalculable influence on her life. Her legal team’s decision not to call a psychiatrist with an expertise in relationship trauma as a witness left it up to jurors how to factor the testimony into their decision.

A prosecutor told the jury in closing arguments that the alleged abuse isn’t relevant to the fraud Holmes was charged with.

“In the absence of any evidence linking that experience to the charged conduct, you should put it out of your mind,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bostic told jurors.

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