Entrepreneur Or Fraudster? Elizabeth Holmes In Court

Order, order, the courts in session. And who’s today’s defendant? Ah, yes, Elizabeth Holmes. You dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 at 19 and founded the blood-testing company Theranos. Then it got shut down in 2018. Now, you got charged with ten counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecution?

Your honor, Ms. Holmes has been trying to develop a revolutionary blood-testing device, a black box, claiming it can detect a range of health conditions, all from the blood of a fingerprick. But in truth, Ms. Holmes knew too well that the device was useless.

Objection! Ms. Holmes was only trying to help patients. Before Theranos got forced to shut down, it received much investment from people like former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, drew in board members like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. At its peak, Theranos got valued at 9 billion dollars.

Double objection! What you’re saying is not true at all. Ms. Holmes and her company were lying all about their technology. They used commercially available testing equipment in their labs. Theranos is not a reliable testing source altogether. Some patients who got tests from the company received feedback that told them things they didn’t have, like diseases that required pills. Ms. Holmes tricked the public and committed fraud.

Where is your evidence? Theranos here is like any other company that wants to make new stuff. And failure is not a crime. Trying hard but coming short is not a crime.

Order order, I’m confused. Wasn’t Theranos in its early days a Silicon Valley superstar? Did it succeed in its technology or fail?

Glad you asked, your honor. The prosecution has already said that Theranos is a fake and that they are just pretending to revolutionize the blood-testing industry. Not only that, they have cheated money from investors, and Ms. Holmes used that to make herself a billionaire. And that is called fraud, clearly, fraud.

Hi there, Chief Editor Tigger here. In truth, this is not a live reenactment of what happened in the courtroom. But through this setup, I explained some of the ideas behind the prosecution and the defense’s arguments. However, you can’t one hundred percent blame Elizabeth Holmes. She and her company failed. If you think about it, Thomas Edison failed thousands of times before improving the element for the filament in the light bulb by using Tungsten. OK, maybe that was too long ago. Fast-forwarding, there is the CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates. He wanted to make an operating system but failed, though he still gave workers salaries, and they continued cooperating. Then it was just a matter of time before the company skyrocketed. And don’t forget Elon Musk, who made an old idea come true, the electric car, by founding Tesla and changing the traditional oil car. And then he decided to create rockets, not just any rockets but reusable ones, with his company SpaceX. That wasn’t easy. By one point, Elon Musk almost went bankrupt!

But why don’t prosecutors prosecute Musk or Gates? Because they used their own money, not investors’. So all the public would say is that they are crazy. While in Holmes’s case, she used investors’ money. So when you’re using other people’s money to create new stuff, be careful! What do you think? Is Elizabeth Holmes a creative entrepreneur? Or a fraudster that lied to the public? What are the consequences? I guess only time would tell, so wait patiently because this trial could continue for an estimated 16 weeks! That’s the end of this production from the New News Newsminute. Thank you, and tune in next time for more updates.