‘Theranos top woman steps up abuse in fraud case’ | Financial

Her former friend and co-driver Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani is said to have done so, US public broadcaster NPR reported, which saw court documents.

Holmes founded start-up Theranos when he was 19 years old. She claimed Theranos had a blood test device that only needed a few drops of blood, rather than a tube as is normal. That claim attracted many investors and Holmes became a celebrity, partly due to the fact that she was one of the few female founders of a so-called unicorn. That name is given to start-ups worth more than $1 billion.

Theranos devices didn’t work, though, but that didn’t stop the company from continuing to pretend they did. Prosecutors say Holmes and Theranos lied to investors, doctors and patients in order to raise an additional $700 million. In 2016, the company went bankrupt.

Scams and Conspiracy

Holmes faces nine charges of conspiracy to commit fraud and two of conspiracy to commit fraud. In total, that could result in the now 37-year-old Holmes up to twenty years in prison. The lawsuit against her starts this week. Balwani is on trial in a separate case, which is expected to serve next year.

Holmes’ lawyers also said she plans to testify herself in the lawsuit. The prosecutors are expected to come with, among other things, patients who received wrong results as witnesses. That will be important for the case, because the servers of Theranos were shut down in 2018, with which an important source of information disappeared.

The case against Holmes was previously postponed due to the corona pandemic and because she was heavily pregnant. She has now given birth.

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