Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!!!

Elizabeth Holmes guilty on 4 fraud charges, all related to defrauding investors, acquitted on 4 fraud charges, all related to defrauding patients, and the jury could not reach a verdict on the three other charges relating to defrauding investors.

She faces 20 years in prison for the fraud charges, but she will almost certainly get much less, because she's a daughter of privilege.

A federal jury found Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes guilty on four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud against investors Monday, in the most high-profile test of whether Silicon Valley’s “fake it until you make it” ethos could withstand legal scrutiny.

The decision — delivered by a jury of eight men and four women after seven days of deliberations — cements what multiple media investigations, podcasts and documentaries have highlighted over the past six years: that Holmes knowingly misled investors about her company’s blood-testing technology. It was a landmark conviction in one of the few prosecutions of a tech executive during Silicon Valley’s rise to global dominance. The jury convicted Holmes of four counts related to interactions with investors, marking a big win for the government’s years-long probe into the entrepreneur. However, Holmes was acquitted on four counts related to patients, and the jury was deadlocked on three other counts related to defrauding investors.

Hopefully, this is the first of many prosecutions of such shenanigans.

Holmes failed in her scam because unlike internet business models, to quote Richard Feynman, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

………

“What a blockbuster end to a blockbuster trial. Elizabeth Holmes made history as a rare female Silicon Valley CEO and the youngest self-made female billionaire [at least on paper]. Now she makes history again as the first Silicon Valley CEO to be convicted of a white-collar crime,” said University of Washington history professor Margaret O’Mara, author of “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.”

The trial opened a window into the secretive world of Silicon Valley start-ups, granting a rare peek into a place where CEOs rarely stand for trial and companies often skirt regulatory consequences. The industry is known for its “fake it until you make it” adage, which leads some founders to overhype their products. But Holmes’s story stood out as an oft-cited extreme example of that culture due to the high-profile investors she attracted and Theranos’s direct involvement in patient health care.

The fact is that Silicon Valley culture these days is woefully inadequate for providing anything with a meaningful result.  It's not just blood testing that crashes and burns, it's something as simple as a fruit and vegetable juicer. 

Hopefully, this opens the floodgates of prosecution.