Elizabeth Holmes found guilty in Theranos fraud case
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The former founder of blood-testing start-up Theranos was found guilty on 4 counts of investor fraud.
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In 2014, the Company was estimated worth $9 billion (Bloomberg)
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, a blood-testing start-up, has been found guilty of defrauding investors.
She has been convicted of 4 charges out of the 11 she faced, and her sentence has been scheduled for a later date. Holmes could be imprisoned for decades.
Theranos accumulated millions of dollars in investment when it claimed it reliably developed methods to test blood for a variety of diseases using only a few drops.
In 2015, allegations surfaced that Theranos was in fact using other manufacturers' machines to run tests on blood samples.
Inspections by authorities led to criminal charges for Holmes and the former CFO of Theranos Ramesh Balwani.
During the trial, Holmes claimed that Balwani had abused and controlled her at the time of the crimes.
Theranos founder takes the witness stand in fraud trial
Elizabeth Holmes had confessed to the jury in her criminal fraud trial on Tuesday that she personally used the letterhead of Pfizer and Schering-Plough on documents sent to potential business partners and investors without the two companies' knowledge or consent.
Her step came to give the impression that the pharmaceutical companies were endorsing Theranos devices, when in fact they had distanced themselves from the startup.
By doing so, "she chose fraud over business failure. She chose to be dishonest with investors and with patients," prosecutor Jeffrey Schenk said in his closing remarks at the San Jose federal court where the trial has been underway for more than three months. "That choice was not only callous, it was criminal," he added.
Holmes said she had no intention to deceive anyone but was merely attempting to acknowledge other work Theranos had done with the relevant pharma companies.
