She'll be Back

The fraudulent blood test company Theranos is liquidating:

Theranos has told its investors that the company will wrap up, paying "unsecured creditors its remaining cash," according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company's dissolution comes months after its top two executives, ex-CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former President Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, were federally prosecuted for criminal wire fraud.

Theranos, with Holmes at the helm, had claimed that it could run a slew of physiological tests with a simple pin-prick of blood. That assertion turned out to be false.

As Ars reported previously, in March 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges against Holmes, Balwani, and Theranos, alleging that they had committed "massive fraud." The SEC accused them of obtaining $700 million in investments by orchestrating an "elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance."

This is not a surprise.

I recalled that she came from money, she does, the  Fleischmann’s yeast fortune, as I confirmed on Wikipedia, but I found something else that was surprising:

Holmes was born in Washington, D.C. Holmes' father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron

That's right, Enron.

Maybe that should have been a hint to the people who were so fascinated by her story.

I need to make it clear that her father was not involved in any of the accounting irregularities that brought down Enron, but one would have thought that it would have rung a bell among the clueless investors who showered her with millions billions.

Still, I do not expect her to see any jail time, she's from money, and she's white, so I expect a slap on the wrist, and maybe some probation and community service.