Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Criminal Fraud Charge Update

Bob001 said:
I can't find a link, but I've seen multiple reports that VCs who actually worked in the medical field passed on Theranos because it looked and smelled fishy. The people who kicked in big bucks, like Rupert Murdoch, swallowed the hype and the celebrity endorsements.
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Yes, noticeably little investment came from biotech which should have been all over this. It did not make sense. it was the range of different things offered, not the number of tests. We will probably be able to screen for hundreds of illnesses on a few drops of blood looking for DNA. Genomic DNA for genetic predisposition, cell free DNA for early cancer diagnosis. Bacterial and viral DNA / RNA for infections. At some point we will need AI to process the volume of data, but this is all essentially the same technology and a simple advance on what is currently done. It makes sense. what she was offering made no sense. i can remember reading about her, and the company and trying to work out how she could possibly do what she claimed, and I couldn't. so I thought it was fishy. The biggest give away was no patents. Any real innovation would be surrounded by dozens of patents.
 
Planigale said:
Yes, noticeably little investment came from biotech which should have been all over this. It did not make sense. it was the range of different things offered, not the number of tests. We will probably be able to screen for hundreds of illnesses on a few drops of blood looking for DNA. Genomic DNA for genetic predisposition, cell free DNA for early cancer diagnosis. Bacterial and viral DNA / RNA for infections. At some point we will need AI to process the volume of data, but this is all essentially the same technology and a simple advance on what is currently done. It makes sense. what she was offering made no sense. i can remember reading about her, and the company and trying to work out how she could possibly do what she claimed, and I couldn't. so I thought it was fishy. The biggest give away was no patents. Any real innovation would be surrounded by dozens of patents.
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And no transparency.

Genalyte is what Theranos could have been. Here’s a link to their test menu. It’s limited, uses a small amount of blood, uses cool new tech in a stylish package, gives results in a few minutes and is cleared by the FDA. This company is extremely transparent. This maybe won’t “revolutionize” testing, but it will be a boon to point of care testing at the time of service.
 
Myriad said:
My gosh, you're right!

You know, that might make an amusing joke, as long as no one came along and explained it. :D
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Well, Theranos did make a lot of investors' money turn to dust....
DOn't know if Holmes snapped her fingers to do it, though....
 
Planigale said:
The biggest give away was no patents. Any real innovation would be surrounded by dozens of patents.
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But there were patents:

https://patents.justia.com/assignee/theranos-inc

Some patents are crap. Unfortunately you would have to actually read each patent to figure this out.

Patent examiners cannot always figure this out. They tend to focus on the novelty requirement more than whether the proposed technology would actually work in practice.
 
In the US an invention has to, on paper, be "Useful" to be patented, but in fact, a lot of batcrap crazy inventions get pateneted. You get the feeling the US Patent office would rather not get involved in whether a invention actually works or not but just stick to whether it violates any other patents.
Though, with drugs and most medical themed inventions, after you get a patent you have to get a whole slew of approvals before you can actually sell it.
 
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The current witnesses are going to be damaging to Holmes since they put a human face on the harm she did.It's no longer a matter of fleecing millioniares but of hurting ordinary people.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot about Mattis.

I think the real question is not, "how did Holmes fool all these people?"

Rather, it's probably, "how many other Holmeses have found a profitable career niche lobbying those in power?"

And, obviously, "how many of the people in power are themselves Holmses running their own long cons?"
 
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theprestige said:
Oh yeah, I forgot about Mattis.

I think the real question is not, "how did Holmes fool all these people?"

Rather, it's probably, "how many other Holmeses have found a profitable career niche lobbying those in power?"

And, obviously, "how many of the people in power are themselves Holmses running their own long cons?"
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Have you met our current government?

No discernible talent between the lot of them, which is saying something even by UK-ian political standards.
 
I'm watching season 2 of Miracle Workers, which takes place in Dark Ages England. Their idea of science, as depicted in the show, is "sun disappears for a little while because satan is messing with it."

Anyway, there is an unqualified doctor who admits to knowing nothing, and a female character says that the science just isn't there yet, but they should "fake it til they make it."
 
carlitos said:
I'm watching season 2 of Miracle Workers, which takes place in Dark Ages England. Their idea of science, as depicted in the show, is "sun disappears for a little while because satan is messing with it."

Anyway, there is an unqualified doctor who admits to knowing nothing, and a female character says that the science just isn't there yet, but they should "fake it til they make it."
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When I was living in Brazil in the 80s, a popular telenovela of the time was set in Brazil during the monarchy in the 1800s. The writers used it as a vehicle for all sorts of comic social commentary on current events. When the government introduced a new vehicle tax, characters in the show started complaining about having to put tax stamps on their horses.
 
Even if Holmes dons a orange jump suit, it won't change the "fake it till we make it" philosophy that drives so much of SIlicon Valley.
I don't know how to fix this, really, except maybe investors will be more cautious about putting money into start up companies with extravagant claims. Not doing "due diligence" always bites you in the butt in the end. What it telling is that the actual biotech industry was always very skeptical about Holmes's claims because of her lack of evidence on her reserach and, I suspect, on the sound reasoning of "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is".
I still think ignorance of high tech is a major reason that Holmes got as far as she did.
 
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theprestige said:
When I was living in Brazil in the 80s, a popular telenovela of the time was set in Brazil during the monarchy in the 1800s. The writers used it as a vehicle for all sorts of comic social commentary on current events. When the government introduced a new vehicle tax, characters in the show started complaining about having to put tax stamps on their horses.
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I think you were thinking of "Que Rei Sou Eu" (What King Am I?), which was not really set in 19th century Imperial Brazil, but in a fictitious end of 18th century European Country, 3 years before the French Revolution.
 
theprestige said:
It would indeed be that one, and clearly my memory of it is not perfect :)
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by your description I knew it could only be that one, and that it was not set in Brazil nor at the 19th century.

But that it was set 3 years before the French Revolution, and that it was a fictitious European country, I had to read at Wikipedia :)
 
The trial continues.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/15/technology/elizabeth-holmes-trial-theranos-takeaways.html

This looks like fraud to me:
In opening statements, Robert Leach, an assistant U.S. attorney leading the prosecution, said Theranos had created a 55-page report that prominently displayed the logos of pharmaceutical makers like GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Schering-Plough and that appeared to validate Theranos’s technology. Theranos used the report to solicit investments.

One problem: The pharmaceutical companies had not written, approved or agreed with the conclusions in the report, Mr. Leach said. One page misspelled the word “institute.”
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But who knew is, I guess, a major question.
 
I used to follow LQMT. They had brought onto the board a former high ranking govt. official, IIRC it was a guy that was briefly in trouble for getting caught with classified stuff on his home computer. Then a brokerage/boilerroom pushed the penny stock. Apparently the guy figured out what was going on and bailed some months later.
 
Darat said:
That's common in pitch books, doesn't necessarily mean anything untoward.
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It may be common but surely it is untoward. The implication is that the companies referenced support the claims being made. Lawyers generally don't like that. At the very least they would claim violation of trademark.
 
Darat said:
That's common in pitch books, doesn't necessarily mean anything untoward.
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Seems like it depends on the specific claim. "These are some of our potential customers" is one thing; "These distinguished authorities have approved our technology" is something else entirely.
 
I'm very curious how this will turn out. I read John Carryrou's book and it's hard to believe that Elizabeth Holmes didn't have any idea her equipment didn't work as advertised. With all the talk about Silicon Valley and comparisons to Steve Jobs, it should be remembered that this wasn't an iPhone or an app. It was a medical device intended to be used by doctors to diagnose and determine treatments for patients. I'm sure the prosecution will hammer this point home during closing.

Something that stuck with me after reading Bad Blood was the accounts of how Holmes and Balwani reacted to criticism or advice from their own employees. They seemed to hand wave away or, at times, cruelly belittle someone else's judgement. The treatment of Tyler Schultz is a good example. But in reality, when Tyler worked at Theranos he had more education in science and biology than literally anyone on their board of directors.
 
Monza said:
I'm very curious how this will turn out. I read John Carryrou's book and it's hard to believe that Elizabeth Holmes didn't have any idea her equipment didn't work as advertised. With all the talk about Silicon Valley and comparisons to Steve Jobs, it should be remembered that this wasn't an iPhone or an app. It was a medical device intended to be used by doctors to diagnose and determine treatments for patients. I'm sure the prosecution will hammer this point home during closing.

Something that stuck with me after reading Bad Blood was the accounts of how Holmes and Balwani reacted to criticism or advice from their own employees. They seemed to hand wave away or, at times, cruelly belittle someone else's judgement. The treatment of Tyler Schultz is a good example. But in reality, when Tyler worked at Theranos he had more education in science and biology than literally anyone on their board of directors.
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It was the time of The Disrupters, there was no reason for things to be so expensive, it was just the old hindbound companies*, but they had brilliant PowerPoint presentations and flashy animations and of course they had an APP! And they had nice hair….

Remember all those tricorders that could tell you everything in your plate of food with a simple click, or the laser razors and so on.

*Often called “science” or the “laws of physics” - we break those laws!
 
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Darat said:
It was the time of The Disrupters, there was no reason for things to be so expensive, it was just the old hindbound companies*, but they had brilliant PowerPoint presentations and flashy animations and of course they had an APP! And they had nice hair….

Remember all those tricorders that could tell you everything in your plate of food with a simple click, or the laser razors and so on.

*Often called “science” or the “laws of physics” - we break those laws!
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To quote Vonnegut," See the cat? See the cradle?"
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
https://www.rawstory.com/holmes-devos/

Critical support for fleecing the DeVos family out of 100 million dollars.
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This is the part I really like:

The Daily Beast reports that Peterson also testified that "DeVos family office was concerned that if their investigation into Theranos was too thorough, the firm would rescind the invitation to invest in what was billed as a groundbreaking technology."
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Clever!!
 
bruto said:
Ars Technica has another one today. It seems that Theranos found signs of prostate cancer in women. Hmmm.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...prostate-cancer-marker-in-prostateless-women/
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A perfectly normal and not unusual error. Unfortunately.

For context, a 2014 study estimated that diagnostic errors happen about 12 million times per year in U.S. outpatients. This represents 1 in 20 adults. Recently the Institute of Medicine concluded that most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their life. Errors related to lab tests are more common than you might think.
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https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-everyone-should-know-about-lab-tests/

Of course, the evidence to date indicates that Theranos tests had a somewhat higher error rate. :(
 
it is, of course, unfortunately true that diagnostic errors occur too often. But usually, such errors occur in the form of saying something is wrong with some part of you when it isn't, not that something is wrong with a part of you that isn't there.
 
The saga continues:

What we learned this week in the trial of Elizabeth Holmes

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/13/tech/elizabeth-holmes-trial-recap/index.html

Eisenman, a retired money manager who took the stand on Wednesday, said his family invested roughly $1.2 million in the company. About $1.1 million of that came in 2006, after he was introduced to Theranos by a friend who was a financial adviser to the Holmes family. "He told me Elizabeth was brilliant," Eisenman said.
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and
For several years, he had quarterly calls with Holmes, but that stopped in mid-2010. Jurors learned that after Eisenman inquired via email about setting up their next call and asked for updated projections on the number of testing cartridges Theranos expected to sell (a metric Holmes had previously provided), the tension was palpable. He didn't get a reply and followed up.
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When he finally made contact he was told to bale. But continued to believe. The prosecution is expected to wrap up shortly.
 
Ongoing.

Today, a jury got to hear Elizabeth Holmes’ lies for themselves

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/18/22790541/elizabeth-holmes-fraud-lies-recording

Today we heard Elizabeth Holmes speak in court — through recordings made for a Fortune article by Roger Parloff. In those recordings, Holmes claims that Theranos worked with the military, was currently working with pharmaceutical companies, that the company could do more than a thousand tests on its proprietary machines, and that the results were “at the highest level of quality.”

None of this was true.

Lying to reporters is not illegal, but it’s generally a bad idea since we tend to record our conversations. We’ve heard a lot about Parloff’s article in US v Elizabeth Holmes, because it was frequently sent to prospective investors as part of the materials Holmes supplied about the company.
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Oh. Oh.
 
She's speaking up.

Theranos trial: Elizabeth Holmes makes surprise testimony

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59355955

Her lawyers say she did not intend to defraud, but instead "naively underestimated" the challenges her business faced.
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I guess this is an interesting defense. "I was not qualified to understand what was (not) happening". And I suppose the followup is that it was everyone else's fault for believing she was.

The cross-examination should be interesting. Will she charm her way out of a guilty verdict?
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
She's speaking up.

Theranos trial: Elizabeth Holmes makes surprise testimony

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59355955



I guess this is an interesting defense. "I was not qualified to understand what was (not) happening". And I suppose the followup is that it was everyone else's fault for believing she was.

The cross-examination should be interesting. Will she charm her way out of a guilty verdict?
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I don't think she can charm her way out of a conviction. Her problem is that she gave the prosecution and embarrassment of riches with all her false, public statements. If the prosecutors are any good (and they seem to be), they'll have a cataloged list of everything she said that wasn't true to throw at her on cross.
 
Craig4 said:
I don't think she can charm her way out of a conviction. Her problem is that she gave the prosecution and embarrassment of riches with all her false, public statements. If the prosecutors are any good (and they seem to be), they'll have a cataloged list of everything she said that wasn't true to throw at her on cross.
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"I'm just a liddle, liddle girl who was taken in by all those smart manly men." ;)
 
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