Holmes in 2003, at the age of 19, left her studies and founded Theranos. Her company has promised to bring revolutionary blood tests to the market that will be able to quickly and cheaply diagnose many different conditions, including cancer and diabetes, from just one drop of blood. In 2013, a woman signed a contract with the Walgreens pharmacy chain to install test equipment in their pharmacies.
It was then that Holmes had become very loud. All the media wrote about it, and it appeared on the covers of the most important American newspapers and magazines. She was widely regarded as a visionary. Thanks to this popularity, she attracted many influential former politicians and military men to her board of directors, including former Secretaries of State Henri Kissinger and George Schulz and future Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
With them came numerous investors who invested a fortune in an extremely promising company. Among them was the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who gave them $ 121 million, and the Waltons, the richest family in the US and founders of Wallmart supermarkets. Holmes herself also became the heroine of American feminists. This is hardly surprising since the young woman was recognized as the most promising face of the male-dominated industry. Holmes herself became famous among them for saying that wherever there is a glass ceiling – as American feminists define the limitations they experience because of being women – there will always be some iron lady who will pierce it. The woman also dreamed of future revolutionary products, such as a band that performs blood tests itself and gives the patient appropriate medications.
Everything fell apart in October 2015, when the Wall Street Journal published a devastating article about Holmes’s work. The journalist discovered that the only product of the company that was approved for use was a herpes test. Theranos blood testing machines, called Edison, were never certified. The newspaper also revealed that due to their extremely low accuracy of their own machines, Theranos performed its tests on machines from other manufacturers, and due to making them on tiny samples, the accuracy was questionable to say the least.
This article was followed by controls. Holmes was banned from running laboratories for two years, the SEC agency, which takes care of stock exchange security, also became interested in its practices, and the companies terminated their contracts with it and brought it to court. Theranos finally ceased to exist in 2018 and Holmes lost all her property to court settlements. Investors, however, did not get back most of their money.
In 2018, the Northern California District Attorney’s Office also began investigating. In mid-July of this year, a jury decided that Holmes and Theranos’ executive manager and her former partner, Ramesh Balwani, would each hear ten counts of remote fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit it. They both insisted on being tried separately. Holmes’s trial was delayed due to her pregnancy and pandemic, but now the federal district court in San Jose is already selecting the jury and proceedings should begin in a few days. Balwaniei’s trial is set to begin early next year.
The heroine of feminists is facing a very serious punishment. For each of the charges against her, she could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and a quarter of a million dollars in fines. The court may also order it to pay damages to the defrauded, which will not be easy given the scale of the fraud. On the other hand, experts emphasize that convicting a woman will not be easy at all. In their opinion, the prosecutor’s office will have to prove that she lied consciously and knew that her company’s machines would never work as promised.
Ultimately, it could all depend on which side will win the jury more liking. Commentators point out that, paradoxically, its advantage is the fact that among the deceived there are very famous and rich characters. Practice shows that in such cases the jury more often takes the side of the accused. On the other hand, among the prosecution’s witnesses there are also deceived doctors and patients – including a woman who claims that she had a miscarriage because of the Theranos test.
According to documents filed by Holmes’s lawyers, their line of defense would be to blame Balwaniei. They have evidence that when they were together, he harassed Holmes mentally and sexually. He would dominate and control her to an enormous degree, including what she eats and how she dresses. Their line of defense will most likely consist in arguing that in such a situation, she could not be responsible for her actions. On the other hand, it is not entirely certain – earlier documents indicated that they would be defending her with an alleged mental illness.
Holmes herself claimed that she was doing nothing that other Silicon Valley companies, which very often publicize their products before they start working properly, would not. She also claimed that the US government was on to her due to media pressure and competition. However, she will not be able to use these arguments in the courtroom – the court forbade her to do so at the request of representatives of the Department of Justice.
Źródło: CNN Buisness, Wall Street Journal, The Hill
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