Celebrity businesswoman Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to more than eleven years in prison for fraud. Holmes built her Theranos start-up into a billion-dollar company, but she did so by defrauding investors and endangering patients, according to the judge.
Elizabeth Holmes has promised a revolution in healthcare with her blood testing company Theranos. According to Holmes, a new technique would make it very easy to perform two hundred tests with just one drop of blood. While normally a whole vial of blood is needed for a test.
This would ensure that serious diseases such as cancer can be detected much faster. But the technology behind Theranos turned out not to be real at all. The blood drawn was secretly analyzed by devices from other companies. The results also often turned out to be wrong.
Holmes was then found guilty of fraud last September. According to the jury, he defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. “I am devastated by my shortcomings,” Holmes said shortly before Friday’s verdict. “Looking back, there are so many things I would do differently if given the chance. I was trying to make my dream come true too fast.”
Holmes is expected to appeal the verdict. His start-up Theranos ceased to exist in 2018. The company was worth $9 billion at its peak. Many investors, including Rupert Murdoch and former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, lost many millions in the affair.
