{"id":382239,"date":"2021-12-16T23:55:22","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T20:55:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/us-prosecutors-argue-theranos-founder-chose-fraud-over-failure\/"},"modified":"2021-12-16T23:55:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T20:55:22","slug":"us-prosecutors-argue-theranos-founder-chose-fraud-over-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/us-prosecutors-argue-theranos-founder-chose-fraud-over-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"#US prosecutors argue Theranos founder chose fraud over failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#US prosecutors argue Theranos founder chose fraud over failure<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\n \"The
\n The prosecution and defense are making their final arguments to jurors in Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’s US fraud trial.
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Prosecutors said Thursday fallen US biotech star Elizabeth Holmes chose fraud over admitting failure of her blood-testing startup Theranos, in their final pitch to jurors in her high-profile Silicon Valley trial.<\/p>\n

Holmes potentially faces prison time if convicted on allegations she defrauded investors and clients of her once-hyped firm, which collapsed after its testing machines did not work.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Jeff Schenk told a San Jose, California courtroom that the entrepreneur, once compared to App<\/a>le founder Steve Jobs, could have chosen to watch Theranos dissolve when its grand claims were not realized or take a different course.<\/p>\n

“Holmes chose fraud over business failure, she chose to be dishonest. That choice was not only callous, it was criminal,” he added.<\/p>\n

She launched Theranos in 2003 at age 19, eventually promising self-service testing machines that could run an analytical gamut cheaply and on just a few drops of blood\u2014a vision that shattered under fraud allegations.<\/p>\n

‘Recruit investors’<\/b><\/p>\n

Holmes, who took the stand in her own defense, admitted in her testimony to mistakes but argued she was deeply committed to Theranos and did note purposely mislead investors and patients.<\/p>\n

Once prosecutors are finished making their closing arguments, Holmes’s defense team will have its chance and then the case will go to jurors for deliberations next week.<\/p>\n

In his closing arguments, Schenk reminded the court of the testimony from former employees who had shared their doubts about the machines, but also a pregnant woman who was told she was miscarrying based on faulty Theranos test results. <\/p>\n

Schenck also noted how former Pentagon chief Jim Mattis recounted how he went from fascination to disappointment with Theranos when he was on its board of directors.<\/p>\n

“Holmes’s role was to recruit investors by making misstatements,” Schenk alleged. “Holmes’s role was to get money and keep Theranos alive.”<\/p>\n

Theranos soared and attracted luminaries such as Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger, but it was a series<\/a> of reports casting doubt on the firm’s claims from Murdoch’s own Wall Street Journal that set the company’s collapse in motion.<\/p>\n

In many ways, Holmes fit the image of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, from her dark-colored turtleneck sweaters that evoked tech legend Jobs to her dropping out of California’s elite Stanford University.<\/p>\n

But the fundamental question has been whether she was a true visionary who simply failed, as she claimed on the stand, or a skilled self-promoter who took advantage of a credulous context to commit fraud.<\/p>\n

Holmes has also sought to put some of the blame on Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, a boyfriend almost two decades her senior whom she brought in to help run the company.<\/p>\n

Balwani, who is facing trial separately, has denied the abuse allegations that Holmes leveled against him during her testimony.\n <\/p>\n\n

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Theranos founder tells US trial she believed in her technology<\/a>\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \u00a9 2021 AFP<\/p>\n

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Citation<\/strong>:
\n US prosecutors argue Theranos founder chose fraud over failure (2021, December 16)
\n retrieved 17 December 2021
\n from https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news<\/a>\/2021-12-prosecutors-theranos-founder-chose-fraud.html<\/p>\n

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