Infamous Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of defrauding investors after a months-long trial. Prosecutors successfully argued that Holmes knowingly lied about her diagnostic equipment which she claimed could diagnose a myriad of diseases from a few drops of blood.
Holmes claimed to be innocent of all 11 charges and was subsequently found not guilty of just four, which related to defrauding the public. Holmes was not taken into custody and her sentencing date has not yet been announced.
Theranos was once valued at $9 billion and garnered more than $900 million in funding from billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch and tech mogul Larry Ellison.
Holmes’ outlandish claims regarding her diagnostic equipment – named the Edison machine – began to fall apart in 2015 when a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed her technology did not work. Instead, the company relied on commercially available diagnostic machines to produce its results.
It is a rather incredible fall from grace for an entrepreneur once called the “next Steve Jobs”. Theranos finally ceased operations in 2018, a full three years after the scandal first emerged.
