Elizabeth Holmes, once dubbed “the next Steve Jobs,” began her ten-year prison sentence Friday. The infamous story of Holmes and her health-care firm, Theranos, is well-known throughout the world, particularly in Silicon Valley.
In early 2022, Elizabeth Holmes’ biotech business, which was valued at $10 billion at its peak, was found guilty on four charges of cheating investors. After years of postponement, Holmes’ 11 years and 3 months in prison began yesterday.
It should not take this long for someone to be proven guilty and imprisoned. However, in Elizabeth Holmes’ case, the lawyers done everything they could to postpone this inevitable day.
Theranos was a biotech business that claimed to have developed a new blood testing technique, but the technology was ultimately found to be inaccurate. Later that year, the US government launched an inquiry into Theranos, which lasted nearly two years. Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos’ CEO was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for fraud in November 2022 after misled investors about the usefulness of the company’s blood-testing technology.
At its peak in 2013 and 2014, Theranos raised more than $700 million from venture capitalists and individual investors, resulting in a $10 billion valuation. All of this came crashing down in 2015, when Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou exposed that the company’s blood testing equipment was ineffective.
Back then, some unwary patients were given blood tests on Theranos devices, which produced false positives for diseases such as cancer, HIV, and even miscarriage. Carreyrou exposed Theranos’ misleading claims in a series of investigative papers he published.
The Wall Street Journal reporter also revealed that Theranos’ Edison device, as advertised by the business, was unable to execute a wide range of tests on a little blood sample. Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty on four of eleven counts of scamming investors, but not on any allegations of defrauding patients. Ramesh Balwani, Theranos’ former COO, was convicted guilty on all counts.
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