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Elizabeth Holmes
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Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of 4 of 11 charges against her in the United States
Up to 20 years in prison may lie the founder of
Teranos biotechnology company Elizabeth Holmes, CNN reported. Announcing the new Steve Jobs Holmes years ago, a U.S. court has found her guilty on four of her 11 charges, including defrauding investors that her company has developed a revolutionary medical device that can detect many diseases by sampling. from a few drops of blood.
Prosecutors described the 37-year-old Holmes as
charlatan,
obsessed with
mania for fame
and wealth
However, the story of Holmes, who has been threatened behind bars for decades, begins as a true tale of success in the land of unlimited possibilities.
Holmes’ first invention was a patch that, in addition to delivering medicine to the body, monitored changes in the patient’s blood to check if the drug was having the desired effect and to change the dosage. Because of him, Elizabeth went for advice to her favorite Stanford professor, Channing Robertson.
“At that moment, I felt like I was looking into the eyes of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates,” said the professor, who gave Elizabeth the blessing of starting a company.
Thus, at the age of 19, Holmes founded Terranos in 2003 and left Stanford to study chemical engineering. Her idea for the device and the drops of blood was so fascinating that she managed to raise more than $ 900 million, some of which from billionaire investors. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch lost $ 125 million from the scheme, while the DeVos family – including Trump-era education minister Betsy DeVos – invested $ 100 million, which they never got back.
Other notable figures who lost large sums include former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who invested $ 3 million, and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mathis, who parted ways with $ 85 million. The Walton family, which owns the Walmart chain, was deceived. They threw a staggering $ 150 million into the project.
In the midst of Terranos’ fame, Holmes had amassed a fortune of $ 4.5 billion and was featured as a visionary on the covers of a number of business magazines. In 2013, the press called her company “a giant in the field of biotechnology that no one has heard of.” Thus, the unknown blonde minion with the vision of an angel immediately gained the fame of the youngest billionaire, who built her wealth on her own. Many began to call her the female Mark Zuckerberg. Even her company’s Palo Alto office used to be owned by Facebook.
In her style, she likes to emulate Steve Jobs – she always dresses the same way – in a black polo shirt, black jacket, black pants and black low-heeled shoes. Jobs’ short biography, printed from Apple’s website, was hung on the wall in her office. But the field Holmes was trying to break into had nothing to do with smartphones, tablets, apps, and social media. Its main goal was to transform the market for blood tests.
The blood test device developed by Holmes is called the Edison and is a black box the size of a desktop printer. It was said that with just a few drops of blood, the device
could
performed around
240 different
blood test
The medical revolution promised a quick and accurate diagnosis of AIDS, hepatitis, cholesterol and cancer. Such were at least the ambitious advertisements.
In the end, however, it turns out that “Edison” determines with accuracy only one thing – whether someone has herpes. In 2015, a Wall Street Journal reporter revealed that Elizabeth had in fact secretly used Siemens blood tests. At that time, her device was already used by a number of pharmacies in the United States and constantly gave wrong results.
During the trial, many laboratory directors testified that they had told Holmes about the flaws in the technology, but had been instructed to cover up their concerns. At the same time, Elizabeth assured investors that the technology was working according to plan.
“She chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest with investors and patients. This choice was not only callous, but also criminal, “said prosecutor Jeff Schenk in the closing arguments in the case.
Holmes’ defense tried to shift the blame to Ramesh “Sunny” Baluani, her former business partner and ex-boyfriend. It was alleged that the 19-year-old man abused her emotionally and sexually, also dictating to her what to do with the company.
Before the court, the defendant described herself as a visionary and a pioneer in the male-dominated technological world of Silicon Valley. If sent to prison, Holmes will be the most famous woman to serve a sentence since Martha Stewart in 2004. No date has yet been set for her sentence.
Holmes’ case was postponed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic and her pregnancy. She gave birth to a baby boy in July in Redwood City, California. This is her first child with hotel heir Billy Evans, who often accompanied her to the trial with her mother.
Journalists in the courtroom reported that the 37-year-old woman did not show much emotion when reading the sentences and hugged her husband Billy Evans and her parents before leaving the courtroom.
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