The last notes of the Theranos melody have sounded. The symphony is over and the audience is heading home. That is what it feels like to see this headline: Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes loses fraud appeal. (BBC). Theranos was a huge story in the business world in the period 2014-2018, in the rise and fall of its claims to revolutionize healthcare tech. It was a big story in the world of crime and punishment in the period that followed its collapse, ending with the conviction of Theranos founder Holmes and her sentencing in the US district court for northern California in November 2022 for a little over 11 years. In the two and a quarter years since, though, the world of constant short news cycles has passed her by. So it comes as a bit of a nostalgic trip to be reminded of the particulars by the circuit court's denial of her appeal in recent days. The appeal contained the usual range of evidentiary issues -- some things were allowed in the evide...
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By most accounts, Elizabeth Holmes' trial for the scam she called "Theranos" is now about half over. The trial has not gone entirely smoothly. The number of alternative jurors is getting low, in part because one of the alternates seemed more interested in Soduko than in the testimony. This is ironic in the sense of combining "who would have thought" with "it figgers." Soduko is a crossword puzzle for 'numbers people.' If that juror is a numbers person, Theranos seems likely to have been the near-perfect trial for them! Yet they missed it. Playing a game with numbers rather than grappling with those the real world provides. Here's a number: $100 million. That's how much Lisa Peterson put into Theranos on behalf of the DeVos family. Lisa Peterson is an investment manager for the DeVos' family office. Think of Tom Hagen, who in The Godfather runs a law practice entirely for the Corleone Family. Peterson is the IM equivalent. Be...
Elizabeth Holmes is preparing to throw her former lover, who is also the fellow who served as chief operating officer of Theranos back when she was chief executive officer, under the bus. Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Will ‘Likely’ Take the Stand to Accuse Ex-Boyfriend and Co-Executive of ‘Intimate Partner Abuse’: Court Documents (msn.com) Did Elizabeth Holmes Defraud Patients and Investors? Update (breakingdailynews.com) She appears to be planning to claim that he, Sunny Bulwani, was the Svengali in the relationship, who abused her, destroying her independence of judgment in the process. By the way, the smallish box above was going to change medicine forever. If it had all been true....
John Tamny has written about the Theranos "Bad Blood" case for the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) and seems to have gotten it utterly wrong. He thinks one ought to stand up for Elizabeth Holmes out of some admiration for heroic entrepreneurship. Sorry, but Holmes is the kind of crook who gives the ideal of heroic entrepreneurship a bad name. Every securities fraudster, when caught blames the losses of his victims on the fact that he got caught. It is a very old and very tired line. I might tell you, dear reader, that I have an algorithm that allows me to take advantage of inefficiencies on the onion futures exchanges. I might take your money, transfer it to my Swiss back account, and then with every appearance of broken heartedness, tell you that my well-intentioned scheme went awry. We lost your money. Those darned unreliable onion futures exchanges. If I'm caught, though (perhaps by authorities who are aware that there are no onion futures ex...