U.S. v. Holmes, et al. was the criminal trial that Holmes was subject to before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The COVID-19 pandemic and Holmes's pregnancy made it more than a year later, but it ultimately began on August 31, 2021. Williams & Connolly, a leading white-collar criminal litigation practice, defended Holmes, while the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California prosecuted the case. Among Holmes's many claims during her seven days of self-defense testimony was that her staff had lied to her regarding the technology and that Sunny Balwani, a defendant in her own right and an ex-romantic partner of hers, had undue influence over her while they were dating.
January 3, 2022 was the day of Holmes's guilty verdict on all four counts of investment fraud. Our legal team has decided to drop all four patient fraud charges: three for wire fraud and one for conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Because the jury was unable to reach a judgment on three counts of wire fraud, the court declared a mistrial. The plaintiff or the prosecution has the option to ask for a new trial for these offenses. Presently, Holmes is "at liberty" on a $500,000 bail, with the promise of future performance serving as collateral. His sentence is still pending. On each count of conspiracy and wire fraud, she faces twenty years in prison, a sentence of $250,000, and restitution. There would be little doubt that the sentences would run concurrently, bringing the maximum effective time to twenty years.
According to The New York Times, the event happened because "Silicon Valley's culture of hustle, hype, and greed" is dangerous.
Strategic marketing Holmes and Carlos Slim Helú established a collaboration in June 2015 to improve blood testing in Mexico. In October 2015, she introduced her IronSisters program, which seeks to encourage women in STEM disciplines. She authored and co-sponsored a measure in Arizona in 2015 that would have allowed anybody to pay for and obtain lab tests without insurance or a doctor's prescription, all the while making misleading claims about how accurate and effective the Theranos device was.
Connections Members of the board of directors and investors of Theranos included many influential individuals. Tim Draper, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and the father of Holmes's childhood friend Jesse Draper, "cut Holmes a check" for $1 million upon hearing her initial business plan for what would later become Theranos. Carlos Slim Helú, the Cox family of Cox Enterprises, the DeVos family, Rupert Murdoch, and the Walton family were among the many wealthy individuals who became investors in Theranos. The fall of Theranos caused a tens to hundreds of millions of dollar loss for each of these investors.
Actually, George Shultz was among Holmes's first board members. Some of the twelve members of the Theranos board that Holmes assembled included Henry Kissinger, William Perry, James Mattis, retired US Navy admiral Gary Roughead, Bill Frist, Sam Nunn, and Riley Bechtel of Bechtel and Dick Kovacevich of Wells Fargo, with Shultz's early involvement aiding Holmes's efforts.
Sorry About That Prior to the downfall of Theranos, Holmes enjoyed high acclaim. In 2015, she had a very successful year due to her nominations to the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows and her inclusion in Time magazine's 'Time 100 most influential people' list. Holmes received the Under 30 Doers Award from Forbes and ranked 73rd on their list of "the world's most powerful women" in 2015. Pepperdine University conferred the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters upon her, while Glamour magazine named her Woman of the Year. When Holmes received the Horatio Alger Award in 2015, he became the youngest person to ever do so in the honor's history. Both Fortune's 40 Under 40 and Businessperson of the Year awards went to her in the past.
The SEC accused her of'massive fraud' after many lawsuits, criminal investigations, and press stories highlighted Theranos's practices. Among Fortune's 2016 list of "The World's 19 Most Disappointing Leaders" was Holmes.
Personal life
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An affair between Holmes and software entrepreneur Ramesh 'Sunn' Balwani—a Hindu Pakistani who eventually lived in India and the US—occurred. They first crossed paths in 2002, when she was an 18-year-old student and he was 19 years her older; he was already married.
Balwani had an affair with Holmes after divorcing his wife in 2002; this occurred around the time that Holmes dropped out of university in 2003. Both lived in the same apartment in 2005. Balwani has been secretly mentoring Holmes since the startup of the company, even though he did not officially join Theranos as an employee until 2009, when he was named chief operating officer. According to employees, the company was characterized by a climate of "secrecy and dread" when Balwani and Holmes were in charge. For a long time, they kept their romance a secret as they operated the corporation together. Balwani left Theranos in 2016 after the inquiries concluded. It is unclear how he quit, since Holmes asserts that she dismissed him while Balwani asserts that he left on his own terms.
Holmes testified on November 29, 2021, that she sought solace from Balwani after being a victim of sexual assault as an undergraduate at Stanford. Balwani was quite domineering, she said, to the point that he sexually attacked her and reprimanded her on occasion throughout their more than ten-year affair. According to her account, he told her to "kill the person" and "build a new Elizabeth" as his stated objectives. Conversely, she verified that Balwani was not pressured into making the false assertions that were sent to investors, business partners, the media, and corporate directors regarding the issue. In court papers, Balwani has "categorically" denied the allegations of abuse, calling them "false and provocative."
Holmes owned half of Theranos's stock before the settlement in March 2018. With a fortune of $4.5 billion, she was named one of America's Richest Self-Made Women by Forbes in 2015. As a result of other investors' preferred shares and the timeline for payment, Holmes' holding became nearly worthless when Forbes released an updated estimate of $800 million for Theranos in June 2016. Allegedly, Holmes has a $25 million debt to Theranos stemming from the execution of stock options. Under the terms of the arrangement, she was not to receive any funds from the company and was not to sell any of her shares—including the ones associated with the debt.
Holmes is engaged to 27-year-old William "Bill"y Evans in early 2019. Evans is the heir to the family-owned Evans Hotels group in the San Diego region. Rumor has it that Holmes and Evans had a little wedding ceremony in the midst of 2019. Since Holmes has not come out and stated that she and her husband are married, several media sources continue to refer to him as her "partner" rather than her spouse. They call San Francisco, California, home. Holmes gave birth to a son in July of 2021.
Media and Holmes's admirers have painted her in a negative light, which has stigmatized other women business owners, particularly those in the STEM (health, engineering, and mathematics) sectors. The recurring similarities are poisonous, and her story's audacity has penetrated popular culture,' writes technology journalist Erin Griffith of The New York Times, who reported about Holmes. This means that women entrepreneurs still feel her shadow. Investor and CEO Ellen Pao wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times claiming that the trial of Elizabeth Holmes was a "wake-up call for sexism in tech" and that the prosecution's goal in prosecuting her was "sexism."
Holmes has been in several films and TV shows:
John Carreyrou's May 2018 book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies at a Silicon Valley Startup, examines both Holmes's life and the company's inner workings. Nearly two years prior to the book's release, Legendary acquired the rights to adapt Carreyrou's work into a film. In January 2019, ABC News, Nightline, and Rebecca Jarvis released a podcast and documentary called The Dropout that centered around the story of Holmes. Along with other members of Theranos' board of directors, notable persons interrogated or deposed in the tapes included Christian Holmes, Tyler Shultz, Elizabeth Holmes, Sunny Balwani, Bill Frist, Gary Roughead, Robert Kovacevichz, and many more. The show also featured interviews with Balwani's agent, Jeff Coopersmith. Two hours of documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2019, aired on HBO on March 18, 2019. The book lays bare the numerous falsehoods spoken by Holmes in the latter years of Theranos and how they contributed to the downfall of the firm. As the documentary winds down in 2018, Holmes and Balwani are facing more accusations of misconduct.
The Dropout, a TV series based on the podcast of the same name, will premiere on Hulu on April 10, 2019, according to Deadline. Cast in March of 2021 was Amanda Seyfried. In the twelfth episode of season seven of the musical Younger, Elizabeth Stanley plays the role of Holmes, a notorious con artist. Australian newsmagazine 60 Minutes aired a segment on August 8, 2021, that focused on the Theranos crisis and Holmes's upcoming trial. In December 2021, Apple Studios gave the go-ahead for a film adaptation of John Carreyrou's novel, which would star Jennifer Lawrence and Adam McKay.