Soon the epilogue of a dark story that originally had all of a fairy tale. In documents sent to justice on November 11, prosecutors demanded a 15-year prison sentence for Elizabeth Holmes. His lawyers are pleading for a maximum sentence of one and a half years in prison. Once on the front page of magazines, this 38-year-old entrepreneur also risks having to return 800 million dollars accumulated thanks to her fraudulent start-up Theranos. Convicted of fraud last January, she will know her sentence on Friday, November 19 in federal court in California.
“Blinded by ambition, [Elizabeth Holmes] defrauded hundreds of millions of dollars from dozens of investors [et a] put patients at risk”, justified Stephanie Hinds, member of the prosecution. For the defense, she would not deserve such a heavy sentence, knowing that she would not pose a danger and would not have materially benefited from her actions. The businesswoman would have failed in “an ambitious project”.
The scam of the century
Elizabeth Holmes had passionate Silicon Valley with a biomedical start-up dedicated to radically changing the face of the world. By founding Theranos, it indeed promised blood samples and analyzes much faster and less expensive than what traditional laboratories offer. With its supposed technology, taking a single drop of blood would have made it possible to carry out numerous medical analyses.
Founding her company at only 19 years old and imposing herself in an essentially male world, Elizabeth Holmes had very quickly inspired and made it possible to bring together many investment funds. But as the world anxiously awaited the launch of Theranos’ technology, the wall street journal had dropped in 2015 a real bomb: Elizabeth Holmes’ machine had never experienced the start of operation. With Elizabeth Holmes, it’s all doctrine”Fake it till you make it” of collapsing Silicon Valley.