Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of the collapsed Silicon Valley blood testing company, Theranos, has been sentenced to 11.25 years in prison plus three years supervised release for financial crimes she committed while running the once-high flying venture.
Holmes was also fined a $400 million special assessment. Holmes must surrender to custody on April 27, 2023. Holmes is expected to appeal.
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Before Holmes' sentence was read, she addressed the courtroom to express remorse.
"I stand before you taking responsibility for Theranos. I loved Theranos. It was my life’s work. My team meant the world to me. They wanted to make a difference in the world. I am devastated by my failings," she said.
"Every day for the past years, I have felt deep pain for the people…those people who believe in us and those patients. I worked so hard to serve. I gave everything I had to try to to build...Theranos. Looking back, there are so many things I would do differently. I tried to realize my dream too quickly."
Critical support for her showing the cracks in investment capital by showing how stupid and scammable all these "make me rich overnight" dorks are. Win for materialism.
Also scamming Kissinger. That shit's funny. Evergreen.
She's only been convicted for investor fraud, which is cool and good. She did also harm actual people through fraudulent medical results, but of course that wasn't part of her sentencing.
Then some kid gets 30+ for selling weed.
JUSTICE IN ACTION.
She should have gotten the max allowable, given how she literally broke records with the scope of her crime.
The real joke is in thinking any Silicon Valley goofball is going to look at Holmes and think becoming a billionaire isn't worth the risk of 10 years behind bars.
lol I fully expect her to be free in a couple years. Even then, her prison will probably have a spa, movie theatre and servants waiting hand and foot.
have a spa, movie theatre and servants waiting hand and foot.
But the servants and the amenities will be fifth rate. At best.
free in a couple years.
Normal people get real, hard time.
Rich people get dog year "prison" time. I'd be shocked if she's in the slammer for more than four years. Or - of course - she could do fantastically well on appeal and - I dunno - get sweetheart deal of house arrest or some shit.
She conned rich people. Big no no. Should have learned from Bernie Madoff.
Read Bad Blood. It is a fantastic read. Lots of horny old white guys got bamboozled because they thought they had a shot to fuck. Bill Clinton, General Mattis, Henry Kissinger, Steve Burd, the CEO of Rite Aid or one of those drug stores... dozens more. Oh, and the big winner, Sunny Balwani
Jesus christ. She really did fly close to the sun. I mean. Critical support i guess? Scamming the worst people on the planet is kinda cool even if she is an asshole.
Founded a company pretending to have developed some sort of awesome blood test, doable by the patients themselves, with a micro-amount of blood, capable of showing a wide range of issues. The tech never worked. She reaped tons of VC money, but eventually the tech was put into question and it all came falling down.
She's also quite a character - she used a different fake voice when pitching to prospective investors, for example.
I've never come up with a joke that I really liked about the hows and whys of her voice. This Youtube comment nails it completely for me...
Her attempt at deep voice reminds me of "hi this is Billy's father speaking, Billy won't be able to come to school today".
I worked in biotech on a working version of what she tried to make about 9 years ago except no microfluidics, just standard pipetting of ml volume liquid. It was all possible. I think the real issue is that most medical tests with small samples have higher error than the industry is willing to admit. IMO, she didn't defraud investors, everything seemed like standard industry lies. This seems more like corruption of powerful people that are able to claw back their money on a losing bet.
From what I read, the whole crux was that you'd be able to take 1 drop of blood and do many tests on it, but they had almost no tests that actually worked on 1 drop, and they claimed they did. They also ran tests in traditional machines to cover up that they didn't have anything working yet. They consistently lied about the state of their capabilities.
Definitely listen to the fake voice link TheCaconym gave. She was audacious beyond belief. Yet her vaporware and her fake voice worked well enough to make her a billionaire!
It really is incredible.
she was trying to sell huckster bazinga medicine but got caught before she sold any
She claimed to invent a machine that could analyze a multitude of medical conditions with a 50mL blood sample which modern medical tech required a full phlebotomy (typically a 500 mL blood draw) to diagnose as one-offs.
After a series of fraudulent tech demos, she raised hundreds of millions for her start-up firm and even began selling prototype machines to pharmacies (CVS, most notably) in order to establish cash flow. Of course, the tech didn't work, so her machines produced a bunch of false negatives. She also had her firm acquire a full Siemens analysis system to fake the results of tests her machines couldn't perform. And, because she was only drawing 50 mL samples, she was engaged in really shady use of the devices to get results out (mixing or diluting samples before introducing them to the Siemens device, which produced more false negatives).
Eventually, she wasn't able to maintain the masquerade any longer. Her business and her tech was exposed as fraudulent. And so the investors sued. They also got the cops involved, because that's something you get to do when you're a billion dollar investment group.
of course she only gets 11.25 years. i wouldn't be surprised if she got out earlier than that
There's no way she's actually going to be in jail for 11 years. She's only 38 now. So she'll likely be in her mid 40s when she gets out. She's probably got the time for at least a couple more serious grifts.
Cult or fundie Christianity. She found Jesus and people need to give her money for yada yada yada.
Ninja edit: Actually - she could create a cultish form of fundie Christianity. That way she can form the religion to her liking and still avoid paying taxes.
The Evans hotel family she married into in 2019 is Mormon fyi so make sure you factor that into your lathing.
Someone was saying that's why she was sentenced to 11 years instead of six months house arrest and a two page essay on how sorry she was like white collar criminals usually get.
Don't Fuck With The Money Men
Or, if you do, make sure you've got the CIA's blessings first.
