SAN FRANCISCO — Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was charged with "massive fraud" by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, a downbeat coda to a once high-flying Silicon Valley start-up that promised to revolutionize the blood analysis process.

The SEC complaint charged that Theranos raised more than $700 million from late 2013 to 2015 while "deceiving investors by making it appear as if Theranos had successfully developed a commercially-ready portable blood analyzer" that could perform a full range of laboratory tests from a small sample of blood.

“But in reality, we allege that after years of development, Theranos was able to process just a small number of blood tests upon its proprietary analyzer, and instead conducted the vast majority of its patients’ tests on modified commercial analyzers that were manufactured by others,” Steven Peikin, the SEC’s co-director of enforcement, told reporters.

More-> https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/201 ... 424670002/

James Mattis is linked to a massive corporate fraud and nobody wants to talk about it
Better let a scandal slide than risk a nuclear war.
By Matthew Yglesias

Secretary of Defense James Mattis is implicated in one of the largest business scandals of the past decades, described by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an “elaborate, years-long fraud” through which Theranos, led by CEO Elizabeth Holmes and president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, “exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

Basically, their biotech startup was founded on the promise of faster, cheaper, painless blood tests. But their technology was fake.

Mattis not only served on Theranos’s board during some of the years it was perpetrating the fraud after he retired from US military service, but he earlier served as a key advocate of putting the company’s technology (technology that was, to be clear, fake) to use inside the military while he was still serving as a general. Holmes is settling the case, paying a $500,000 fee and accepting various other penalties, while Balwani is fighting it out in court.

Nobody on the board is being directly charged with doing anything. But accepting six-figure checks to serve as a frontman for a con operation is ...

Continued>

One way of closing the "gender gap".

Disgusting! ~ proving the lesson that you don't "win" when you have to cheat ~

Sooz

The trial of Elizabeth Holmes gets under way
The former boss of a notorious failed health-care startup could face jail

https://www.economist.com/img/b/1000/56 ... blp907.jpg

A CROWD of reporters and Hollywood types, drawn by the drama and glamour of the event, are likely to jostle to find a seat in a courtroom in San Jose on August 31st for what may be the next, perilous act for a woman once touted as the next Steve Jobs and the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Jury selection will begin for the fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the former chief executive of Theranos, a startup which attempted to revolutionise the process of blood testing but failed spectacularly in 2016 after the press and regulators probed the company’s inflated claims.

These sorts of cases usually hinge on subtle distinctions between exaggeration and outright deceit and whether such deceit was intentional. But the legal intricacies may take second place to theatrics. Will Ms Holmes take the stand in her own defence, a move fraught with risk under the spotlight of ...

https://www.economist.com/business/the- ... y/21804091

The Sexism That Led to the Elizabeth Holmes Trial



https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opin ... exism.html

Elizabeth Holmes followed the Silicon Valley playbook to a T. She was focused and ambitious. She had a compelling vision to help humanity with technology for blood tests, and her ambition, she said, was driven by a personal fear of needles. She fit the pattern of the young, brilliant college dropout, even dressing like Steve Jobs.

When she founded the unconventional blood-testing company Theranos in 2003, I was relieved to see a woman finally benefit from the hyperbole that dominates venture investing, a world I worked in for nine years, total. Why shouldn’t a woman show the same single-minded confidence that her male peers did? By 2015, Ms. Holmes raised more than $400 million in financing and Theranos was valued at $9 billion. At last, I thought: a charismatic woman with a compelling vision, actually able to raise huge amounts of funding at astronomic valuations.

But after it was revealed that Theranos was not transparent when ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opin ... exism.html

Somehow I don't think that the phrase "not transparent" is interchangeable with the word "fraud"

LOL

Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes accused of bilking Betsy DeVos' family out of $100 million
The DeVos family says it was “singled out” by Theranos for investment
By TRISH ROONEY

The billionaire family investment firm of Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, was misled by former Theranos executive Elizabeth Holmes when it made a more than $100 million investment in the failed startup, a representative for the family said during testimony in Holmes' fraud trial on Tuesday, reports said.

Holmes, the charismatic founder of Silicon Valley's onetime biotech darling, is currently on trial in San Jose, California, for wire fraud. Lisa Peterson, the DeVos family's private equity investment manager, said during her testimony that the family even doubled its investment, from $50 million to nearly $100 million, after Holmes dazzled them during a pitch meeting.

Peterson also said that Holmes was "handpicking" super-wealthy families to invest in the company, despite the fact that she knew the blood testing equipment that Theranos manufactured didn't work, according to the Washington Post. When prosecutors asked if ...

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/27/theran ... 0-million/

Defrauding fraudsters is a crime?

Elizabeth Holmes: What’s Next for Theranos Founder After Her Conviction for Fraud
Holmes expected to appeal; sentencing not expected for months
Sara Randazzo , Heather Somerville and Anthony DeRosa

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos Inc., was found guilty Jan. 3 on four of 11 counts of criminal fraud against investors. She was acquitted on four counts tied to patients. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the remaining three counts tied to investors.

What happens next for Elizabeth Holmes?

She likely will be allowed to stay free on bail until her sentencing, which could take place six months or more from now, sentencing experts said.

It is all but certain Ms. Holmes will appeal, a process that can take years. In an appeal, Ms. Holmes could challenge aspects including evidence the judge allowed over the defense’s objections or any sign of juror misconduct, though none has emerged so far.

The judge said he plans to hold a conference in about a week to discuss the three counts on which the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision and any plans by the government for ...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth- ... 1641318330

she should probably get a medal for defrauding the DeVoss family.