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Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for Theranos fraud
- briandear 4y agoGood. She was a psychopath.
- jonny_eh 4y agoStill is I assume.
- shippintoboston 4y agoWas? She popped out to kids in the hopes she’d get off easy.
- thefaux 4y agoScapegoating 101.
- thefaux 4y agoJust because her behavior was horrible doesn't mean she isn't a scapegoat.
- ianhawes 4y ago
- throwaway2729 4y agoSeems cruel having a child despite knowing you were going to jail.
- bergenty 4y agoSeems like an easy out for a woman if she commits any crime then and this one is bad, probably way, way worse than say a rape.
- ninth_ant 4y ago… the children she chose to have after she knew she’d almost certainly be jailed? Yes, that was a cruel choice she willingly made.
- gmd63 4y agoIt's pretty acrobatic to shift the weight of the blame onto a justice system that is accurately holding a criminal accountable, from a psychopathic mother who could have used the cruel and unusual tactics of having a kid to avoid legal trouble.
- lordfrito 4y agoConsequences. She knew she might be going to prison when she made the decision to start a family. Her appetite for risk apparently also involves her children. She gambled and lost. For the second time. What a despicable thing for a mother to risk depriving her children... they didn't have a say in the matter but she sure did. The cynic in me wonders if she only had them to increase the odds of a more lenient sentence.
- bpodgursky 4y agoThe part that sort of gets me here is that given that she wasn’t convicted of patient harm (questionable, but that’s the verdict), I don’t have any real interest in sending her to prison for defrauding investors. The investors were wealthy morons who invested with 0 research on the technical feasibility of the company. They deserved what they got. Do some due diligence next time.
- A_D_E_P_T 4y ago11 years for defrauding "investors" who literally hoodwinked themselves and couldn't bother to do basic due diligence is egregious.
- thefaux 4y agoHoodwink the entire public and nearly bring down the entire financial system, get a government bailout. Hoodwink a few rich investors, go to jail. Both at taxpayer expense.
- foolfoolz 4y agowhite collar crime isn’t crime
- jdthedisciple 4y agoThat's not how law and justice work. "The home owner has been a prick to his neighbours anyway, the guy who robbed him shouldn't have been sent to prison"
- ShivShankaran 4y agoThat's what I don't get about this case. It looks like she ticked off few politicians. Playing with investors money is literally abc of startups. I don't understand this case at all
- causality0 4y agoDefrauding rich people is much more legally dangerous than murdering poor people through deliberate negligence.
- mrlonglong 4y agoI can't believe she tried to get out of it by having babies. I feel for her kids, it's going to be really shit for them.
- joshlemer 4y agoIsn't there a less cynical explanation, that she wanted to have children and, facing the prospect of over a decade in prison, that this was her last opportunity to have them?
- bergenty 4y agoThat’s incredibly selfish on her part if that’s the case.
- layer8 4y agoThat’d be barely better, because the children would still suffer.
- idop 4y agoSo she knew she was going to prison, and decided to bring kids in to the world to grow up without a mother? That's even worse. Edit: typo
- bostonsre 4y agoI think the father is pretty wealthy, I'm sure there will be some downsides but they will have a decently easy life.
- shaburn 4y agoSeems oddly tragic.
- kjs3 4y agoConsequences are tragic? Certainly Holmes thinks so...
- yunwal 4y ago???
- s1artibartfast 4y agoIndeed. The whole story is tragic and sad. What a waste of talent, money, and time. Not to mention the kids. Of course she should still be accountable, but people get so caught up in the anger and vengeance aspect that they forget it is also sad. The whole situation is regrettable and it would be better if it never happened.
- shaburn 4y agoSeems like she could have made a few right turns down a longer path and been a game changer. Obviously much of the tech seemed...wanting. The ability to enlist such powerful people in such an important mission was power gone to waste. At least she didn't waste it driving clicks.
- lordfrito 4y agoHave we forgotten about the fact that Theranos had to void two years of blood test results? People were eventually going to get hurt by this lie. There were real crimes committed here, with real consequences for the perpetrators. It sucks for her children that their mother was found guilty of her crimes, that's no ones fault but her own.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThey said it was a tragedy, not that it wasn't her fault.
- gopled 4y agoIt seems odd to me how she's being punished so much for defrauding investors, but not for endangering patients with fraudulent blood tests. Is the latter just easier to prosecute because of the paper trail? Or is the law biased more towards punishing financial crimes?
- datalopers 4y agoTheranos raised $1B; FTX raised $2B. So we can assume that SBF gets 22yrs prison right?
- jdthedisciple 4y agoNope, probably much more since he isn't a female. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- quantified 4y agoI'd triangulate between Holmes and Madoff.
- pxue 4y ago
- bergenty 4y agoGood, I feel bad for Balwani for getting caught up in her mess.
- tyingq 4y agoFederal time also, so she will serve most of it. They offer 54 days credit per year for good behavior, which is much smaller than what you often see for state vs federal sentences.
- SevenNation 4y ago> Holmes in January was found guilty of four charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Wikipedia has this short lay description of wire fraud: > In layman's terms, anyone trying to scam other people or groups through any form of communication (paradoxically, even wireless) e.g., phones, instant messaging, email, or through writing, signs, pictures or sounds can be punished with a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. If the scam involves a financial institution, the maximum fine is raised to 1 million US dollars and prison sentence not more than 30 years, or both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_and_wire_fraud#Wire_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_and_wire_fraud#Wire_fraud It sounds like the FTX crew might be facing similar charges at some point.
- johndhi 4y agoVery sad for anyone to go to prison in this country, which nearly never provides any healing or help.
- bostonsre 4y agoIt's mainly a punishment and deterrent here. As a society I think we are better off trying to stop other people from doing a similar crime than trying to rehabilitate her.
- bena 4y ago"Little has been said about the innovation Elizabeth strived for" What the hell is this quote? "Yeah, she defrauded people and lied to her customers, but guys, she really, really, really wanted it to work". We might be talking about her striving if she had tried and failed. If she had tried and came close. But, no, that's not what happened. She claimed she did something she didn't, then took a lot of others' people money to build a business upon that lie. So, no, we won't be talking about her "vision" or whatever.
- daveevad 4y agoAt least one strange aspect of her biography that has always stood out to me is: > During high school, she was interested in computer programming and says she started her first business selling C++ compilers to Chinese universities. That seems extremely suspicious and unlikely but I would love to learn more about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes#cite_note-Roger2014-19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes#cite_note-Rog...
- layer8 4y agoAt the time, C++ compilers costing money was normal (Microsoft, Borland), and those were physical products (CD-ROMs, printed manuals), so it seems semi-plausible she could have acted as an intermediary with the help of her parents.
- djaouen 4y agoI was in high school around the same time as Holmes and recall using g++ as our compiler. This was on Linux, though.
- layer8 4y agoI know. I wouldn’t put it past her being business-savvy enough to sell the Chinese g++. :)
- kjs3 4y agoMy experience with Chinese universities was that they had their own ecosystem to "obtain" Western software. They didn't need an intermediary.
- djaouen 4y agoMight be true because Holmes has a pathological stupidity.
- rsynnott 4y agoYeah, was trying to find out more about that before, couldn't find anything. Now, the journalist wrote a followup about how he'd been mislead, and maybe that was part of the misinformation... but if it was it was a deeply weird thing to make up. Holmes is about the same age as me, and when I was in high school there were definitely free C++ compilers, even for Windows (I vaguely remember messing around with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJGPP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJGPP, and Borland also had a shareware C++ compiler...)
- codex_irl 4y agoOut of curiosity, does anyone know what happened to all of the Theranos hardware / technology after the company was shut down? e.g. the edison testing machines
- rheffern 4y agoI'll hop on here in a vain hope too. I want to buy a Theranos Edison machine and am willing to pay. If you know anyone that has one, parts of one, or anything like that, my email is in my bio and I am very happy to talk to you. I intend to take a small portion of it, melt it into steel ingots, and include it in 'Order of the Engineer' rings for myself and my colleagues who are also engineers. We are looking for physical equipment in which engineers screwed up and the general public paid a high price for it, as a reminder to ourselves that our work is meaningful and is one of service to the people we serve with our efforts. If you know of any equipment that may fit that bill, I am looking to pay for that too.
- chihuahua 4y agoJohn Carreyrou's book about Theranos is absolutely riveting, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something suspenseful to read.
- lessname 4y agoI wonder if she did make any profits out of Theranos or was it all for nothing?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]