For six days on the stand as the ultimate witness at her own criminal trial, Elizabeth Holmes deflected blame, regretted mistakes and lamented that she suffered years of abuse at the hands of her second-in-command at Theranos ho was also her boyfriend.
The 37-year-old entrepreneur will soon learn whether her bold gambit to address the jury in person keeps her out of prison.
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is facing multiple conspiracy and fraud charges.Credit:Bloomberg
As Holmes reached the final stage of testifying this week, a federal prosecutor continued to chip at her credibility, while she alternated between making uncomfortable admissions, failing to recall certain events and denying others.
When her lawyer got a chance to change the subject, Holmes returned to the earlier defence theme of blaming others. She took particular aim at Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former romantic partner, for the rosy forecasts about the company’s financial prospects and its blood-testing technology that are the basis of the fraud charges against the pair.
Until a federal audit in 2015 revealed serious problems with the Theranos lab operations – including that they posed a danger to patients relying on the blood tests – Balwani had insisted the Theranos lab “was one of the best labs in the world,” she testified.
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The key issue in the case remains whether Holmes intended to mislead investors and patients while raising hundreds of millions of dollars for Theranos before media and regulatory scrutiny drove it into ruin by 2018.
The government claims the startup was built on lie after lie, while the defence argues Holmes was doing her best to make the business succeed and wasn’t trying to deceive anyone about its prospects.
In the cross-examination of Holmes that began last week, the government pressed her on two of its most damning allegations – that she falsely boasted Theranos machines were used by the US military and forged pharmaceutical company reports. Prosecutor Bob Leach made a special point of distancing Balwani from those actions.
Ultimate witness: Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will soon learn whether her bold move worked
Source: Philippines Alive
