What you should know about the trial against Elizabeth Holmes 1:22
(CNN) -
A San Jose jury found Elizabeth Holmes, the discredited founder and former CEO of Theranos, guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against the company's investors, and could not reach to a settlement on three other counts of wire fraud.
In turn, the jury found Holmes not guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against doctors and patients, and three other counts of wire fraud.
Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison, as well as a $ 250,000 fine plus restitution for each count of wire fraud and each count of conspiracy.
The verdict comes after a lengthy trial that began last fall in federal court in San José presided over by Judge Edward Dávila.
While Holmes, 37, was first charged more than three years ago, her trial was delayed by the pandemic and the birth of her son.
The trial attracted significant interest given Holmes's celebrity during his heyday and as a rare criminal fraud trial of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
advertising
For a time, Holmes was hailed as a visionary.
After dropping out of Stanford University, he founded Theranos in 2003 at age 19 with a noble mission to revolutionize blood testing.
Inspired by their avowed fear of needles, Holmes' company Theranos promised patients the ability to detect diseases such as cancer and diabetes with just a few drops of blood.
In 2013 he partnered with Walgreens and attracted a powerful board of directors made up of political titans including former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, as well as four-star general and future Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
As the company's valuation soared, reaching $ 9 billion at one point, so did its profile and net worth.
She was lauded on magazine covers as the richest woman in her own power and "the next Steve Jobs," an image she helped cultivate.
Then everything fell apart.
A damning investigation by The Wall Street Journal in October 2015 called into question the capabilities of the company's proprietary Edison blood testing machine and Theranos testing methods.
Jurors heard 32 witnesses during the course of the case. The prosecution called 29 witnesses, including former Theranos employees, retail executives and a former United States Secretary of Defense, while attempting to weave the complicated web of alleged deception that Holmes allegedly engaged in to allegedly defraud investors and patients. . The indictment was intended to trace what Holmes knew about his company's technology and its flaws, when he knew it, and that he intended to deceive despite having knowledge.
Holmes acknowledged that Theranos devices were only used to perform a dozen tests on patients, but he provided his side of the story as to why and did not admit that it was due to technological failures.
While she expressed some regret during her time on the stand, she denied that she intended to deceive, a key point that the prosecution needed to convince jurors to convict her of.
Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, who were romantically involved while working together, were accused of participating in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors from 2010 to 2015, as well as a scheme to defraud the doctors and patients who paid for their blood test services from 2013 to 2016. Both have pleaded not guilty.
InstaNews
