The fall. Elizabeth Holmes, a former Silicon Valley star who promised to revolutionize blood testing with her start-up Theranos, was convicted on Monday January 3 of fraud by a California court. It is a rare sanction in the world of “tech” where disillusions are nevertheless commonplace. After more than three months of trial and seven days of deliberation, the jury of the San José court found her guilty of defrauding investors but acquitted her of certain charges and was unable to come to grips with it. ‘agreement on other facts with which he was accused.
This conviction exposes the 37-year-old woman to several decades in prison, but the sentence will be pronounced at a later date by the federal court. Elizabeth Holmes remains free on bail, a measure the terms of which are to be reviewed next week. Pressed to say if she intended to appeal her conviction, the fallen boss made no comment when she left court.
She had founded Theranos in 2003, at the age of just 19, and promised diagnostic tools that were faster and cheaper than those in traditional labs. With the help of a careful story, she had managed in a few years to gain the trust of luminaries and to raise funds from prestigious investors, attracted by the profile of this young woman, a rarity in the male world of Californian engineers. . In the early 2010s, she notably wore a black turtleneck sweater in explicit reference to Apple founder Steve Jobs, to whom the world of “tech” constantly compared the young entrepreneur when she was at the height of her fame.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger backed her, as did former Defense Minister James Mattis or media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who is investing more than $ 100 million (€ 88 million) in Theranos . At its peak, the company is valued at nearly $ 10 billion, and majority shareholder Elizabeth Holmes is the head of a fortune of $ 3.6 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The story was beautiful. As a child, she hated needle pricks during blood tests. She will therefore invent a simple, fast and efficient machine that will allow everyone to carry out hundreds of blood diagnoses from a single drop of blood taken from the fingertip. But in 2015, the Wall Street Journal raises the huge pot of roses: the fabulous machine promised by Theranos has never worked.