Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, once called the next Steve Jobs for her start-up promising to revolutionize blood testing, has been found guilty of four charges in her criminal fraud trial on Monday. The jury verdict follows a closely watched trial that lasted nearly four months.
Federal court jurors convicted Holmes of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud against specific investors. For the charges, Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison. U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila will sentence her at a later date.
Additionally, Holmes was found not guilty of four charges and the jury could not reach a verdict for the final three of the 11 charges. Judge Davila has declared a mistrial on those three counts, meaning that Holmes may face a new trial for those charges in the future.
Holmes founded the biotech start-up in 2003 when she was just 19-years-old Stanford drop-out, claiming to have invented a way to scan for hundred of diseases with just a drop of blood from a single finger prick.
The company gained mainstream attention in 2013 with it signed Walgreens
Theranos at its peak amassed a valuation of $9 billion, raising funds from high-profile investors including the family of Betsy DeVos and Rupert Murdoch.
The biotech's luck started to run out in 2015 after the Wall Street Journal published a series of reports by then-WSJ journalist John Carreyrou that exposed the inaccuracies of Theranos' blood-testing technology. The WSJ reports revealed that the company's testing machine, named the Edison, could only process a small potion of blood tests, with many other tests needing to be run on other companies' machines, providing inaccurate results.
Theranos dissolved in 2018 following both civil and criminal probes, including charges made by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Holmes was indicted that year alongside Theranos top executive and then-boyfriend Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. Holmes settled the SEC case, paying a $500,000 fine and agreeing to not serve as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years. Balwani did not agree to a settlement and is expected to go on trial for the charges early this year.
Holmes was convicted of defrauding PFM Healthcare Master Fund of $38 million, Lakeshore Capital Management of nearly $100 million, and Mosley Family Holdings of almost $6 million.
