Rupert Murdoch
The journalist who busted Holmes was John Carreyrou, who worked for the Wall Street Journal.
Rupert Murdoch invested 125 million dollars into Theranos and would later sell his shares for $1, before taxes.
Holmes admitted in court to going to Murdoch and asking him to suppress the story, where he rejected it and refused to have any intervention in the Wall Street Journal.
This is actually a really good thing for confidence in journalism.
The owner of a company had a direct financial interest in suppressing a story and opted not to. This happening from Rupert Murdoch of all people is also pretty interesting.
Holmes claiming assault at Stanford
Elizabeth Holmes claimed the reason she started Theranos was being sexually assaulted on campus in her freshman year and she wanted to focus away from school and into a project.
To make it clear, I believe 99.9% of the time in cases like this, but lets look at Holmes.
Two years ago, she was trying to avoid this trial, because her legal team said she was mentally unwell and that didn’t pass.
She gave a speech saying she started Theranos, because of her dying uncle. That same speech, she did a fake demonstration of the Theranos Edison machine and just took public sympathy before lying to the public for money.
She spent 11 years of her life frauding employees, investors, the FDA, the public and even people getting health test for her own gain.
I’m not going to say she’s telling the truth or lying, but I believe she’s done enough screwed up things that we can focus on that and not recognize that as a statement over trust.
Sunny Balwani is being blamed
When a sketchy disgraced tech CEO fails, the best plan is blaming another sketchy disgraced tech CEO.
Balwani was the COO of Theranos and was romantically involved with Holmes for years.
And to be clear, this is a sketchy guy.
Made 40 million dollars in 2000 as a product of a tech company that later failed, but he exited, with some investors saying he lied about that ventures success.
After that, he goes to Stanford as a grown man in his 30s with 40 million dollars to get a PhD. Spent half a decade doing various programs on campus, didn’t get a degree and was known for using his money to impress female students.
He also was the one in 2014 to tell investors that they had a 100 million dollar revenue stream that was actually $100,000.
Holmes at this point seems like she’s not really trying to defend Theranos as not a fraud, but just wants Balwani to be blamed and get the big jail time.
Ultimately, I think both get big jail time.
Final thoughts
She’s going to jail.
The mission here seems to be blaming Balwani and while he’s guilty, this trial is still on her and he’s going to have his whole other thing which will send him to jail as well.
The strategy seems to be admitting to some wrong doing in handling information, making a fake defense of Carreyrou to say what he did was good and blame the entire thing on Sunny Balwani.
Something which we’re seeing, both deserve to go to jail and not just one.