Elizabeth Holmes.
Barring a last-minute plea deal, the long-awaited, oft-delayed federal fraud and conspiracy trial ofTheranos founder—and new mom—Elizabeth Holmesis finally set to begin inside a central California court.
Jury selection starts Tuesday inside the Peckham Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, and is expected to last two days, a court official confirms.
If convicted, Holmes — the subject ofan HBO documentaryas well asa forthcoming Hulu miniseriesstarringAmanda Seyfried— could be sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.
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Holmes first rose to prominence in 2014, as the CEO of healthcare start-up Theranos.
However, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur became infamous some 20 months later, after being accused of an “elaborate years-long” fraud that duped investors out of millions.
Federal authorities allege that Holmes misled patients and physicians about the efficacy of her company’s blood tests. She’s also accused of lying to investors in 2015, telling them that Theranos would generate $1 billion in revenue when she allegedly knew the company would only generate a few hundred thousand dollars that year.
Born in Washington, D.C., to an Enron executive father and a congressional committee staffer mother, Holmes spent the majority of her youth in Houston, Texas. Holmes studied chemical engineering at Stanford University, but never earned a degree, dropping out in 2003 to launch Theranos.
By the fall of 2014, the company she first started in 2003 was valued at $9 billion.
His initial report suggested the product Holmes was selling — a minimally invasive blood test that could perform a variety of tests with minor amounts of blood on a machine she called The Edison — did not work and that the company was using outside technology and other subterfuge to fake positive test results.
The article triggered other exposés on Theranos and attracted the attention of federal authorities.
In the spring of 2018, Holmes and her former company president,Sunny Balwani, were charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. A tenth wire fraud charge was filed against Holmes in 2020.
In 2019,the turtleneck-donning Holmesgot engaged toWilliam “Billy” Evans, the 29-year-old father of her son, William.
Evans' grandparents founded theEvans Hotel Group, which currently owns and operates three major resorts in California.
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Holmes and Balwani are accused of “raising more than $700 million from investors through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance,” reads a statement from the Department of Justice, issued in the wake of the arrests.
Both defendants entered not guilty pleas. Balwani will be tried separately in January.
Several Theranos patients are expected to be called as witnesses at the trial. It’s also likely former Theranos board members and investors such as former United States Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and former United States Secretary of Defense James Mattis will testify.
Prosecutors have openly boasted that their evidence against Holmes is airtight.
Meanwhile, it was revealed in court filings unsealed over the weekend that Holmes intends to take the stand in her own defense to accuse Balwani of using psychological, emotional and sexual abusive tactics to manipulate and control her.
Balwani’s lawyers called the allegations of abuse “salaciously inflammatory.”
source: people.com
