Disgraced Theranos CEO, Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of wire fraud

After a lengthy trial that was interrupted by a pregnancy and a pandemic, a jury has found Elizabeth Holmes guilty of fraud.

A federal jury found Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes guilty of fraud on Monday.

Holmes was unanimously found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was found not guilty of four more charges and the jury could not reach a decision on three additional fraud charges.

The verdict comes after San Jose federal court jurors deliberated for seven days, weighing reams of evidence from a three-month trial that saw that testimony from dozens of people, including Holmes herself.

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Ms Holmes leaving the courthouse with her partner, Billy Evans, and her parents. Picture: Nick Otto / AFP.

It also comes after the jury of eight men and four women told Judge Edward Davila on Monday morning that they couldn’t reach an unanimous verdict on three out of 11 charges. Judge Davila then urged the jurors to keep deliberating, but the jury returned hours later to say they still remained deadlocked on three charges.

The judge overseeing Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ fraud trial had urged jurors to keep deliberating earlier on Monday after they said they were unable to reach unanimous verdicts on the three charges.

After jurors’ initial statement, Judge Davila asked jurors to re-examine their own views on the three unresolved charges and change their opinions if persuaded they are wrong.

Federal prosecutors had accused Holmes of spearheading a massive scam as she promised patients and investors that Theranos was building technology capable of revolutionising medicine by testing for hundreds of diseases using a single machine and a finger prick of blood.

They said that Holmes knew Theranos lacked the technology to deliver on Holmes’ promises — even as she raised nearly $1 billion from investors and became a Silicon Valley icon, posing for magazine photo shoots wearing a black turtleneck in homage to her hero, Steve Jobs.

At one point her net worth was estimated at $4.5 billion.

“She chose fraud over business failure,” federal prosecutor Jeff Schenk told the jury during closing arguments in December. “She chose to be dishonest. This choice was not only callous; it was criminal.”

Like Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes wore a uniform of black turtlenecks. Picture: Taylor Hill/FilmMagic.

Holmes’ — who gave birth to a baby boy in July — argued that the founder genuinely believed in the potential of Theranos, pointing to the fact that she stayed at the company long after a damning 2015 Wall Street Journal exposé showed the company’s technology was deeply flawed.

“You know that at the first sign of trouble, crooks cash out,” Downey told jurors in San Jose federal court. “She went down with that ship when it went down.”

“She believed she was building a technology that would change the world,” he added.

The defence also tried to shift blame from Holmes to Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes’ ex-boyfriend and Theranos’ former chief operating officer. Holmes said that Balwani controlled and manipulated her in the boardroom and the bedroom.

Balwani — who is nearly 20 years older than Holmes — controlled how she behaved, spoke and even ate, according to Holmes. He also pressured her into sex, she said.

“He told me that I didn’t know what I was doing in business, that my convictions were wrong, that he was astonished at my mediocrity and if I followed my instincts, I was going to fail,” Holmes said.

During her trial, Ms Holmes alleged her former COO attempted to manipulate and control her during their time working together. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Image.

Balwani said that “who I was was never going to be a person who would succeed in life or in business, so I needed to kill that person and become a new Elizabeth,” Holmes added.

Prosecutors told jurors that Holmes can still be guilty of fraud even if she was abused by Balwani.

Balwani, who has denied Holmes’ accusations, is facing the same charges as Holmes in a trial slated to begin next year.

This post originally appeared on the New York Post and has been republished with permission