Holmes faces 20 years in prison as well as a $250,000 fine plus restitution for each count of electronic fraud and each count of conspiracy.
Hours later, the jury returned another note indicating that they still could not reach a verdict on those charges.
After reading the note aloud, the Judge led the jury into the courtroom. He questioned jurors about whether more deliberation would help reach a unanimous verdict, without any jurors raising their hands to indicate that was the case. He took them back to the deliberation room to complete the sentencing.
Holmes, who claims to have revolutionized blood testing, faces nine counts of federal electrical fraud and two counts of wire fraud conspiracy over allegations she knowingly lied to investors. investors, doctors, and patients about her company’s ability to test blood for their money and favors. her company.
Judgment is made after a The lengthy trial began last fall in federal court in San Jose presided over by Judge Edward Davila. While Holmes, 37, was first indicted more than three years ago, her trial was adjourned due to the pandemic and the birth of her child.
The trial, which lasted three months before a jury was sent, drew considerable interest to Holmes during her heyday and was a rare fraud trial for a businessman in the United States. Silicon Valley.
Holmes started Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19 and soon dropped out of his sophomore year at Stanford to pursue full-time endeavors. After a decade of operating under radar, Theranos began to publicly advertise its ability to test for diseases such as cancer and diabetes with just a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick and announced a partnership to sell retail with Walgreens.
Many people believed the promise: Theranos raised $945 million from prominent individuals investing in Theranos, including media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Walmart’s Walton family and family billionaire family of former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. That valued Theranos at $9 billion, making Holmes, for a time, a paper billionaire. However, the dominoes began to fall apart after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 found that the company only used its proprietary technology for about a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered. and with questionable accuracy.
Meanwhile, the defense’s case relies heavily on testimony from Holmes himself.
Tested for about 24 hours over the course of seven days in court, Holmes admitted that Theranos’ devices were only used to conduct dozens of tests on patients but provided her side with a story as to why. and does not admit it is due to any technological error. She acknowledges several other key points of the government but considers herself a true believer in the company’s capabilities and mission. While expressing some anxieties during her time on the spot, she denied ever intended to deceive – a key point the prosecution had to convince jurors to convict Holmes.
Holmes pointed at the others, doing so mostly Her ex-boyfriend, former president and chief executive officer of Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, oversees several key areas referred to as the company’s clinical laboratory. (Balwani faces the same charges as Holmes and is due on trial earlier this year. He pleaded not guilty.)
Holmes testified that although she was unaware of everything that happened at the company, she “never” took any steps to try to mislead investors.
“They are long-term investors, and I want to talk about what this company can do a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now,” she testified. “They don’t care about today, tomorrow or next month. They care about the kind of change we can make.”
When asked if she had ever led a patient to believe that Theranos could give accurate and reliable blood tests while knowing it was impossible? Holmes testified: “Of course not.”
Rishi Iyengar contributed to this story.
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