Shocking Details Surface about High Value Silicon Valley Executive

High Value Silicon Valley Executive
High Value Silicon Valley Executive

Shocking details continue to emerge about this high value Silicon Valley executive. It’s something that even a layperson should have seen coming a mile away.

On January 3, 2022, a jury found Elizabeth Holmes guilty of defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. This verdict capped off the downfall of one of Silicon Valley’s most dynamic young executives. She had promised to revolutionize blood testing with simply just a small sample of blood, but her dreams were dashed due to her tremendous amount of scandals.

It took 50 hours of deliberations over seven days, but this jury of eight men and four women convicted Holmes of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud because she lied to investors about Theranos, a once up-and-coming biotech company that she had established when she was 19.

The jury found Holmes not guilty on four of the other fraud-related charges that had been connected to allegations that she duped patients who had received false or faulty results from tests conducted by Theranos, which collapsed four years ago.

The jury was not able to reach a unanimous verdict on three other counts tied to investor fraud. U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California in San Jose, Edward Davila, is planning on declaring a mistrial for those three counts. It is unclear whether prosecutors are going to indict her again for those charges, but that is a possibility allowed under federal law.

“The guilty verdicts in this case reflect Ms. Holmes’ culpability in this large-scale investor fraud and she must now face sentencing for her crimes,” U.S. Attorney Stephanie Hinds said in a statement.

Although Holmes’ sentencing date has not been set, she could get up to 20 years behind bars. However, many legal experts believe she will get a lesser punishment.

The court was eerily quiet when the verdict was read.

Holmes had a mask on and did not appear to show any visible emotion.

She was later seen hugging members of her family in the front row of the court one by one.

37-year-old Holmes clasped the hands of several other family members and stared straight ahead as he walked out of the courtroom, a multitude of cameras flashing around her.

Jurors in the four-month San Jose trail heard from as many as 30 witnesses called by the prosecution. Both of them painted Holmes as a charismatic entrepreneur who secured hundreds of millions of dollars in investments for a medical device that failed to deliver on her promises. When Theranos’ technology fell short, Holmes covered it up and instead kept insisting that the machines would transform how people are diagnosed through blood tests.

Holmes took the stand for 20 hours in her defense, accusing her boyfriend and former deputy at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, of physical and sexual abuse, saying that his actions clouded her judgment. Balwani also faces a separate fraud trial in February.

Legal experts saw this move as questionable because allegations of abuse are not generally considered a legal defense in a white-collar criminal trial.

Moreover, the guilty verdicts handed down by the jurors show that they were not persuaded that Holmes should be exonerated for hoodwinking investors out of millions of dollars.

Among those that Holmes scammed would include Rupert Murdoch, Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and Walmart’s Walton family. Jurors also appeared to feel that Holmes was lacking in remorse, saying that although she could have handled things differently, she only blamed others for the downfall of the company.

Plenty of other big names believed in the company, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former President Bill Clinton. However, the company began to fail when Theranos’ machines could not deliver on their promises that a single finger prick could help doctors and other health professionals check for hundreds of diseases. The machines were not worth the materials they were made with. This high value Silicon Valley executive simply did not deliver.

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