This case is United States v. Holmes and others.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California presided over Holmes's criminal trial in U.S. v. Holmes, et al. After being postponed for more than a year because to the COVID-19 pandemic and Holmes's pregnancy, it finally started on August 31, 2021. United States Attorney for the Northern District of California prosecuted the case, while top white-collar criminal litigation firm Williams & Connolly defended Holmes. Holmes spent seven days testifying in her own defense, during which she claimed, among other things, that her staff had misled her about the technology and that Sunny Balwani, her ex-romantic partner and another defendant in the trial, exerted undue influence over her while they were romantically involved.
The jury convicted Holmes guilty on all four charges of investment fraud on January 3, 2022. The four charges of patient fraud—three of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to conduct wire fraud—are all dismissed. The court proclaimed a mistrial on three counts of wire fraud after the jury failed to reach a verdict; either the prosecution or the plaintiff may request a new trial for these charges. Holmes is presently 'at libert'y on $500,000 bond, which is secured by a promissory signature. He is awaiting punishment. She is facing twenty years in jail, a fine of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and restitution for every count of conspiracy and wire fraud. The sentences would most certainly be served simultaneously, resulting in a maximum effective term of 20 years.
The incident 'came to exemplify the hazards of Silicon Valley's culture of hustle, hype and greed,' as reported by The New York Times.
Marketing initiatives In June 2015, Holmes formed a partnership with Carlos Slim Helú in order to enhance blood testing in Mexico. Her IronSisters initiative, which aims to empower women in STEM fields, was unveiled in October 2015. While falsely claiming that the Theranos gadget was both accurate and effective, she helped write and pass a bill in Arizona in 2015 that made it possible for anyone to pay for and get lab tests without insurance or a doctor's prescription.
Connections Numerous powerful people were members of Theranos's board of directors and investors. After hearing Holmes's first proposal for the company that would become Theranos, Silicon Valley venture entrepreneur Tim Draper—the father of Holmes's childhood friend Jesse Draper—'cut Holmes a check' for $1 million, becoming her first big investment. Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, the DeVos family, the Cox family of Cox Enterprises, Carlos Slim Helú, and others joined the pool of large investors in Theranos. Upon Theranos's collapse, each of these investors saw their fortunes plummet by tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
George Shultz was really one of the first board members of Holmes. Henry Kissinger, William Perry, James Mattis, retired US Navy admiral Gary Roughead, Bill Frist, Sam Nunn, and former CEOs Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo and Riley Bechtel of Bechtel were among the twelve members of the Theranos board that Holmes recruited, with Shultz's early involvement assisting Holmes's efforts.
Apologies For Holmes was well regarded prior to Theranos's demise. As a result of her 2015 appointments to the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows and her inclusion in Time magazine's 'Time 100 most important people' list, she achieved great success in 2015. Among Forbes' 2015 rankings of 'the world's most powerful women,' Holmes came in at number seventy-three, and the magazine also bestowed its Under 30 Doers Award onto her. Glamour magazine recognized her Woman of the Year, and Pepperdine University bestowed the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters upon her. Holmes became the youngest person in the history of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans to receive the Horatio Alger Award in 2015. She was a past recipient of Fortune's 40 Under 40 honor and Businessperson of the Year.
A number of legal lawsuits, criminal investigations, and news reports about Theranos's operations led to her being accused with 'massive fraud' by the SEC. 'The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders,' an article published in 2016 by Fortune, included Holmes.
Private life
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Holmes had an affair with software entrepreneur Ramesh 'Sunn' Balwani, a Hindu from Pakistan who later settled in India and the United States. He was married to another lady when they met in 2002, when she was 18 years old and still a student; he was 19 years her senior.
Around the time when Holmes dropped out of university in 2003, Balwani began an affair with her, after his 2002 divorce from his wife. In 2005, the pair shared an apartment. Although Balwani did not formally become an employee of Theranos until 2009, when he was appointed COO, he had been quietly coaching Holmes from the beginning of the firm. A corporate culture of 'secrecy and dread' permeated the organization under the combined leadership of Balwani and Holmes, as reported by workers. They ran the firm together while keeping their romance under wraps for a long period. As a result of the probes, Balwani departed from Theranos in 2016. Holmes claims she fired him, but Balwani claims he left on his own terms, so it's not clear how he departed.
While a Stanford undergraduate, Holmes was a victim of sexual assault, and she sought comfort from Balwani following the occurrence, according to her testimony on November 29, 2021. She went on to say that during their over a decade-long romance, Balwani was very controlling, and that he even sexually assaulted and scolded her on occasion. 'Kill the person' and 'build a new Elizabeth' were two of his declared goals, according to her testimony. On the other hand, she confirmed that the false statements made to investors, business partners, media, and corporate directors in the case were not coerced by Balwani. Balwani has 'categoricall'y disputed the abuse claims in court documents, describing them as 'false and provocative.'
Prior to the settlement in March 2018, Holmes had 50% of the shares of Theranos. In 2015, her net worth of $4.5 billion earned her a spot on Forbes' list of America's Richest Self-Made Women. Because other investors held preferred shares and would have been paid before Holmes, who owned just common stock, his position became almost worthless when Forbes published an updated estimate of $800 million for Theranos in June 2016. Reportedly, Holmes owes $25 million to Theranos from stock option exercises. She did not sell any of her shares, including the ones linked to the debt, and she did not receive any cash from the firm as a result of the agreement.
William 'Bill'y Evans, 27, is the heir of the San Diego area's Evans Hotels, a family-owned chain of hotels, and Holmes got engaged to him in early 2019. Holmes and Evans supposedly tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in the middle of 2019. Several outlets still call him her 'partner' instead of her spouse, and Holmes has not explicitly said that they are married. San Francisco is the couple's home. The boy was born to Holmes in July 2021.
Holmes has been portrayed in a bad light in the media and by those who hold her in high esteem, which has led to the stigmatization of other female entrepreneurs, especially those in the medical and scientific fields. According to technology writer Erin Griffith, who wrote about Holmes in The New York Times, 'the repeated parallels are toxic' and 'her story's daring has infiltrated popular culture,' meaning that women entrepreneurs still feel her shadow. According to an editorial post published in the New York Times by investor and CEO Ellen Pao, Holmes' trial served as a 'wake-up call for sexism in tech' and her prosecution was motivated by 'sexism.'
Holmes has made appearances in many media works:
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies at a Silicon Valley Startup, written by John Carreyrou and published in May 2018, delves into Holmes's biography and the inner workings of Theranos. Legendary bought the rights to adapt Carreyrou's book into a picture almost two years before the book came out. A podcast and documentary titled The Dropout was launched in January 2019 by ABC News, Nightline, and Rebecca Jarvis, which focused on the Holmes tale. Notable individuals interviewed or deposed in the recordings included Tyler Shultz, Christian Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes, Sunny Balwani, Bill Frist, Gary Roughead, Robert Kovacevichz, and the other members of Theranos' board of directors. Jeff Coopersmith, who is representing Balwani, was also interviewed for the series. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, a two-hour documentary that had its world debut at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2019, was shown on HBO on March 18, 2019. It shows how Holmes's promises and assertions in the later years of Theranos led to the company's demise due to the abundance of lies. In 2018, as the documentary comes to a close, Holmes and Balwani face various charges of wrongdoing.
Deadline announced on April 10, 2019, that Hulu would release a TV series called The Dropout, which is based on the podcast of the same name. Its star, Amanda Seyfried, was cast in March 2021. In a musical song about infamous con artists, Younger stars Elizabeth Stanley as Holmes in episode 12 of season 7. The anticipated trial of Holmes and the Theranos scandal were highlighted on the August 8, 2021, edition of the Australian newsmagazine 60 Minutes. With Jennifer Lawrence and Adam McKay at the helm, Apple Studios greenlit a film version of John Carreyrou's novel in December 2021.
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