Ex-Theranos Chief's Fraud Case Goes to Jury After 3-Month Trial

CC0 / succo / Hammer
Hammer - Sputnik International, 1920, 18.12.2021
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The jury of eight men and four women received the case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes who is facing criminal fraud charges regarding her company's claims to have invented an innovative blood test technology, US media reported.
Over the past three months, 32 witnesses gave their testimonies on the case. The jury of the federal court in San Jose, California, received the case on Friday, after listening to closing arguments from the prosecution and the defence, and will return to deliberate on Monday morning.
Holmes' lawyer Kevin Downey described her as an entrepreneur "building a business and not a criminal enterprise," according to the CNN broadcaster. However, the prosecution claims that the businesswoman intentionally lied to investors and misrepresented her blood-testing startup as a cutting-edge technology.
"If someone is acting in good faith or someone does not believe that what they are doing actually is part of a scheme to defraud, then the correct verdict is a not guilty verdict," Downey told jurors as quoted by CNN.
Theranos, founded in 2003, attracted millions in investment on claims that it invented reliable methods to test blood for a range of diseases using only several drops. At one point, the company was considered worth more than $9 billion, thus making Holmes a billionaire and earning her numerous mentions as an extremely successful entrepreneur.
However, the 2015 article by the Wall Street Journal suggested that the company's own testing equipment might produce unreliable results and Theranos was using other manufacturers' machines to run their tests. The publication was followed by closer examinations by authorities, lawsuits and, eventually, criminal charges for Holmes and former Theranos chief operating officer, Ramesh Balwani.
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