On Monday, Jan. 3, after a four month-long trial in which Elizabeth Holmes herself took the stand, the jury returned a verdict of guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud against investors in the blood-testing company.
The jury was deadlocked on three of the counts earlier in the day, which each involved specific charges of wire fraud in December 2013. These counts are still pending verdicts.
However, Holmes was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud, and not guilty on one conspiracy count and three counts of wire fraud.
The federal government had charged Holmes with 11 counts total, including two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. Essentially, they said Holmes misled investors about Theranos’ technology, business dealings, and future — which ultimately led to the now-defunct company’s loss of $945 million, entrusted to Theranos by some of the world’s most high-profile investors.
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Theranos’ failure as a company was not on trial. Instead, the government had to prove that Holmes got investors to give Theranos their money by intentionally being untruthful. Some of the most compelling pieces of evidence used to bolster this argument were details Holmes herself added to investor documents, including partnerships and endorsements that didn’t exist. Then there was the hands-on way she tried to control both whistleblowers and the press narrative about Theranos. There was also audio and video of Holmes lying.
Holmes was one of just three witnesses for the defense. She claimed she believed she was telling the truth about the company at the time, and said that her own falsehoods came from bad information she’d gotten from other Theranos employees. On her final day on the stand, Holmes testified that she was in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship with ex-boyfriend Sunny Balwani, Theranos’ former COO, and that one facet of that abuse was his control over her behavior. Balwani faces trial for fraud in 2022.
It seems that the government’s version of events won out. There will likely be appeals and legal skirmishes to come, including the pending verdicts on the three deadlocked charges.
For now, this chapter of the Theranos story is closed — until the next development.
This is a developing story.
