Elizabeth Holmes Dam: The Fall of the $9 Billion Chief Executive Officer

9 years ago, elizabeth holmes She was considered the youngest billionaire on the planet. Magazines began to link the success she’d had with her own health technology company to the meteoric career of none other than Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. If the tycoon had a $100 million fortune at 25, “the new Steve Jobs,” then 32, kept close to 4,500 millionaccording to Forbes.

The glory ended shockingly fast. Today, the businesswoman is serving 11 years in a Texas prison for defrauding investors in her company. Theranos.

The US Justice Department had found her guilty in January 2022 for one count of conspiracy and three counts of fraud for fraudulent activity in the company he had created at the age of 19.

Holmes was the founder and CEO of Theranos, a biotech startup dedicated to simplifying laboratory tests, which promised to detect hundreds of diseases, including cancer, with a drop of blood through state-of-the-art machines.

However, Holmes billed exorbitant amounts based on such claims. Theranos was reportedly disbanded in 2018, but has been evaluated 9 billion dollars and in 2015 it took more than 800 employees. It was some of them who allegedly accused her of fraud.

Holmes’ top aide and ex-boyfriend of Theranos founder Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani has been convicted of defrauding investors and patients in the bankrupt venture.

Holmes displayed exceptional persistence throughout his life. As a teenager in Texas, he taught himself Mandarin and started a business selling software to universities in China. He managed to get into Stanford University, but At the age of 19 he decided he didn’t need to continue studying with the experience he already had and opened his own company.

It was 2003 and the company was called Real-Time Cure. Located in Palo Alto, California, he was born while in his freshman year at Stanford and was funded with money his parents had saved up for him to complete the rest of his college degree.

Then she changed the company name to Theranos (therapy plus diagnosis: “therapy” and “diagnosis”), as the young entrepreneur realized that the term “cure” (cure, in English) aroused suspicion in the social imagination.

In 2015, everything fell apart when the Wall Street Journal exposed the scam. The newspaper reported that the “miracle machines” they have not respected what the entrepreneur promised and that the deception has reached important figures.

As it became known later, among the investors and others involved were tycoon Rupert Murdoch, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and another former secretary, in this case of Defense during Donald Trump’s term, James Mattis ; former President Bill Clinton, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and Mexican mega-millionaire Carlos Slim, all of whom have invested in Theranos.

Holmes he had lied about his technological developmentbut the question for those following the case was whether he knew the claimed invention didn’t work. The mystery ended up turning her life around in the miniseries The abandonment (Abandonment, in English)from the Star+ platform, which garnered six Emmy nominations.

Even the HBO chain has echoed the case, with a documentary on the repercussions of the scam. He was called Drying up Silicon Valley and talks about the rise and fall of Holmes and his company.