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Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth
- CPLX 3y agoAlways interesting to see which convicted felons get a chance to explain themselves to a sympathetic NYT writer and which ones don’t.
- jimlongton 3y agoI eagerly await the sympathetic PR-optimised Bankman-Fried NYT article.
- anonzzzies 3y agoYeah, then we are all complete. What a miserable outlook. Will happen though. I understand why it is what it is, but I don’t think killing 1 person with a knife is necessarily worse than bankrupting 1000s (or more ; the fallout of financial scammers is hard to measure). I think life in prison definitely should be on the table, in the same place with the sexual deviants and murderers. I wouldn’t find it that weird to give someone like Madoff 1000 life sentences and some poor sap who got in a fight and killed someone by accident but the agressor was white and rich, getting a few years. I guess here in the EU it is the latter but not the former and in the US the reverse. I prefer the EU stance, but in an ideal world, financial crimes affecting enough people should be treated as like murder, not just a slap on the wrist.
- amelius 3y agoWell you could even justify it by looking at life expectancy of rich vs poor people, and then consider how many years of potential life are lost by the backrupting of 1000s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost
- jimlongton 3y agoThe investigative Youtuber 'CoffeeZilla', Stephen Findeisen, often emphasises the human cost of scams, including bankruptcy and suicides. His description of these scams as a type of "financial murder" may sound extreme but I have to agree with him when the effects are so devastating to so many people.
- slillibri 3y agoBernie Madoff received a 150 year sentence and died in prison. Hardly a slap on the wrist.
- anonzzzies 3y agoWhat he did is comparable to a serial killer in the way he ruined lives. And on a very large scale. The max punishment for that is apparently 150 years. And that is not in sing sing, but in some cushy place. But you are right; he got something that matches the crime vaguely; the problem is that this is an exception and that’s why it’s well known. Many grifters get a few years or nothing for destroying 100s of lives.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bpodgursky 3y agoPresumably the ones who had bestselling novels written about them. Stabbing someone in an alley for a hit of fentanyl doesn't really draw the clicks. News is a business.
- iinnPP 3y agoWhat a sad state of affairs. Your second example is far more news worthy. Oddly enough, the end result of this preference will -probably- be increased public "justice."
- nikanj 3y agoThis reminds me of the crazy schemes from the Freeman on the land-movement. ”The person committing the fraud was startup CEO Elizabeth Holmes, who is in no way connected to Liz Holmes, sweet mother of two” Trying to claim that your crimes were committed by a made-up fictional person doesn’t really work, unless you’re shooting for an insanity plea
- jl6 3y agoIt seems to work for the sex offenders that change their name after being caught: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-64760314.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-64760314.am...
- formerly_proven 3y agoMaybe Civil law countries were right about this and you shouldn’t be able to change your name without a significant reason.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoYou need a reason in several US states, and have to be approved by a judge. Some give more leeway than others, but you can't just roll up and ask to have your name changed to "Tequila Slammer Johnson III" without some damn good reasons. But if you want to change your name from Jessica Smith to your middle name, and thusly be Amanda Smith, that might fly. Doubly so if you have a stalker ex with restraining orders. Plus I'm not really cool with the idea of you being forced to have a name. You didn't choose it, your parents' did, and they may not have been in sound mind (or have ever been in sound mind, for that matter). If I'm an adult and can vote, drink alcohol, operate motor vehicles, etc, why can't I chose my own name? We let people choose their own pronouns, are you forcing people to use a dead name now, too?
- invalidname 3y agohttps://archive.is/9lJL9 https://archive.is/9lJL9
- coldcode 3y agoShe acts as if she has dissociative identity disorder and that the other person was not actually her. Looks more like she was just a good actor and still has the ability to fool people into thinking she is something else, like she did to the author.
- tough 3y agoIf this bullshit passes over any judge/jury ffs what's wrong with murica
- jimlongton 3y agoThe author is in on it - "it" being a cynical PR managed portrayal optimised to garner sympathy and disassociate her from her crimes. The tactics are so blatant - introducing her as a "mom", the homely photo, focusing on her children, her first quote about how is was all a "mistake" and portraying her as a victim of things she didn't understand. It's honestly offensive.
- carlmr 3y ago>the homely photo At first I wanted to alert you that homely means ugly, however then I googled the definition and found that it means ugly for AE and cozy and comfortable in BE, according to Oxford. Still maybe good to know that it has such diverging meanings.
- BrandoElFollito 3y agoAnd then for me (French) I read it as "a photo depicting a home situation, a photo from home" :)
- encryptluks2 3y ago[dead]
- eternalban 3y ago> still has the ability to fool people into thinking she is something else I recommend you sit back and review how you arrived at this conclusion. I have personally never interacted with Elizabeth Holmes and everything I know about this person has come through the lens of first media, then courts, and then media again. It is the media, including the New York Times, that is creating this impression, is that not the case? So, correctly your sentence would read “still has the ability to fool the handful of people who interact with her directly and then share accounts with us”. So now, having established the actual state of affair in this ‘information graph’, the next question naturally is: “are these people really fooled or are they fooling me?” I.e. Do we have gullible people in positions that require inquisitive and thorough mindsets, or, even more “actors” pretending to being journalists, a sort of “dissociative [professional] identity disorder”.
- jongjong 3y agoI only care about her crime to the extent that some people may have suffered as a result of getting inaccurate test results or paying more for a service under false pretenses. These days I struggle to see the ethical issue with defrauding the government manipulators and monetary system monopolists who had invested in her.
- d23 3y agoSeeing no ethical issues with lying and fraud at a mass scale is an interesting take.
- esrauch 3y agoI don't share OPs view but I think it can make sense in a "murder is wrong, but murdering murderers isn't wrong" kind of sense.
- kerkeslager 3y agoI think the point of the post was that "government manipulators and monetary system monopolists" are also engaged in lying and fraud at a scale much more massive than Holmes ever was. If you don't like lying, you might want to edit at your post, where you misrepresented the content of the post you're responding to by removing pretty vital context.
- d23 3y agoThe context is as readily available as it gets -- it was the message I was responding to. It's absurd to reduce all investors to "government manipulators and monetary system monopolists". In what way were all the victims of Theranos's fraud lying at a larger scale?
- kerkeslager 3y agoThis isn't a team sport: just because I'm pointing out that you're wrong, doesn't mean I'm agreeing with the other guy. It's absurd that you ignored half the comment you were responding to. Whatever point you might have had, you burned all your credibility when you decided to make a dishonest argument by taking someone else's words out of context. Why should anyone talk to you if you've shown you're unrepentantly taking words out of context to win an argument? I'm not talking about Theranos with someone like that, because that discussion would require nuance which you'll just ignore half of.
- notorandit 3y agoNo way. This is history. Also Brutus and Hitler would have preferred everyone to forget about them...
- giaour 3y agoThe framing of this story is kinda bizarre. The author keeps insinuating that Holmes is charismatic but full of shit, but the first mention of this is 40% through the article (and the first 40% is pretty flattering of Holmes). My takeaway, though, was that even now, as Holmes is counting down the days before reporting to prison, she is completely unrepentant.
- spaceman_2020 3y agoSociopaths can be very charismatic. Narcissism + confidence + lack of empathy makes them easy to like at first glance.
- rayiner 3y ago[flagged]
- bdcravens 3y agoOne idea is that becoming a parent is the PR strategy. Supposedly she started her relationship as Theranos was falling apart, and both of their children have been born while she has going through prosecution. She was pregnant with the second at the time of her sentencing.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoCould be. But if you're a woman in her late-20s to mid-30s, and looking at 10+ years in Federal Prison, you either have kids now or never.
- readthenotes1 3y ago"It's science." Sorry, this is 2023. If you are going to make a psychological "science" claim, you are saying the claim is likely false as the field is mostly covered in bullshit
- rayiner 3y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/parenting/mommy-brain-science.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/parenting/mommy-brain-sci...
- eternalban 3y ago'The board was criticized for consisting "mainly of directors with diplomatic or military backgrounds"' So that's for Liz. There rest also want you to forget this board of directors: Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO Henry Kissinger, former Sec State, NSC Sam Nunn, former US Senator Riley Bechtel, former Bechtel Group CEO David Boies, a founder and the chairman of Boies Schiller Flexner William Foege, former director of the CDC Richard Kovacevich, former CEO and chairman of Wells Fargo Jim Mattis, later U.S. Secretary of Defense Fabrizio Bonanni, former executive vice president of Amgen ... https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2013/08/30/theranos-the-biggest-biotech-youve.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2013/... So this is a very interesting on-going story. I really want to finally read about the actual story about this "most secretive company".
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- peppermint_gum 3y agoI don't get why some of the commenters are so surprised by the article. There's a long history of newspapers showing the "human side" of famous criminals. Even Charles Manson got articles like these. You should always apply a bit of Straussian reading to them. For example, note how in the opening sentences the author confirms that Elizabeth was faking her voice the whole time (as many have suspected). That's not something a truly sympathetic article would have pointed out.
- hartator 3y agoThey weren’t chilling for the other side a few years ago.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- akudha 3y agoOf all the ethics questions her story/life poses, the one that is bothering me the most - if she hadn't cheated wealthy investors, if she had only played with average people's health/wealth, would she have gotten this much attention? this much punishment? If the answer is a no or a maybe, then we have much, much bigger issues than one person being a fraud, sociopath etc Another thing to think about - all those press fawning over her (similar to SBF), did those journalists do any due diligence at all? I understand doing good journalism is hard, but it is their moral responsibility to at least double check before praising someone as genius, savior of mankind or whatever else, isn't it?
- efields 3y agoIt’s all so exhausting, isn’t it? The PR machine, endlessly contorting reality. She can be a nice, caring person and still do lots of crimes and ruin the lives of others. This isn’t newsworthy; it’s a vanity project for both the author and the subject.
- nokya 3y agoYes.
- soderfoo 3y agoBut whom are they trying to prime and persuade? I agree with you, and found this article to be quite heavy handed at times thematically, but what's the ask or end goal? Hoping readers engage in a letter writing campaign to the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit?
- efields 3y agoVanity. A chance to change the conversation. Just a way to feel better. Mama Liz has her reasons (and money to hire a publicist).
- red-iron-pine 3y agoShe won't be in jail forever, and good behavior can get you out early. Plus what else are you going to spend money on in the can? Ramen and smokes?
- Jedd 3y agoIf I'm ever convicted of large-scale fraud / sociopathic crimes, I'd definitely like Amy to write a story about me. > .. in 2017. They did not anticipate that she would be indicted. They did not anticipate that she would be sentenced to 11 years. John Carreyrou's story broken in October 2015, and his investigations the next few years resulted in his book Bad Blood being released in 2018. I expect everyone that read his original story, or any of his and other reporters' subsequent investigations, would have just naturally assumed indictment, conviction, and sentencing were inevitable - assuming some semblance of justice was involved. And while we were finding out some of the awful truths, Elizabeth was of course already intimately aware of all of them. So that claim is just ludicrous. The author touches on the problem of how to trust someone who by all accounts is a pathological liar - but doesn't seem to have a good answer.
- soderfoo 3y agoFound it interesting that the author alluded to avoiding incarceration had she accepted a plea deal. I wonder if this has a factual basis or is mere speculation.
- nickdothutton 3y agoIt’s just non-stop mask wearing. The mask of the CEO, and now a different mask. Can’t hold her responsible for the CEO stuff because that was a different person right?
- diimdeep 3y agoIs there adequate scholarly video with explanation and critique of U.S. justice system? I do not understand what U.S. justice system even doing all this time, waiting for her to collect pay check from autobiographical Hollywood epic so she can buy off even more free time outside jail ?
- frob 3y agoThis looks like it got some sort of silent ban hammer. It went from high on the first page to nowhere on the first 4 in about 15 minutes.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoLizzy burned a lot of people, including a non-trivial number of the kinds of folks who post on HN. But the best way to ensure a topic dies is to ignore it. Which is what we should be doing to Liz Holmes.
- Simulacra 3y agoHas the chance of her going to prison been eliminated or is it still a possibility?
- srshearer 3y agoRIP Balto. “I can't shake an earlier story that Mr. Evans relayed. In the waning days of Theranos, Ms. Holmes got a dog, a Siberian husky named Balto. Last year, when a mountain lion carried Balto away from the front porch, Ms. Holmes spent 16 hours searching in the woods, digging through brambles and poison oak, hoping to find him alive. Everyone knew Balto was dead, but Ms. Holmes kept searching. The relentlessness. The certainty. The fanaticism. It's the same way Ms. Holmes kept hanging on at Theranos. Ms. Holmes eventually found her beloved husky, Balto, in the woods. But by then the dog was gone, torn apart by the mountain lion.”
- deepfriedchokes 3y agoAt this point I doubt very much this is true.
- deathgripsss 3y agoI don't think any of that happened. It's all a narrative.
- misiti3780 3y agoshe probably killed the dog just to create the narrative
- SilasX 3y agoYeah, she's like Frank Underwood, except it wasn't a mercy killing.
- candiodari 3y agoI am actually a lot more interested in the question of the board and investors. If Ms. Holmes is indeed a not-so-smart sociopath/psychopath/... why was half the top level of the US government so prepared to hand her a big check? A partial list people she convinced: George Schulz (former Secretary of State) and "via him" ... * Richard Kovacevich, former Wells Fargo & Co. CEO * Jim Mattis, former head of U.S. Central Command who later became Defense Secretary * Gary Roughead, U.S. Navy officer * Sam Nunn, former U.S. Senator * Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State * William Perry, former Defense Secretary * Richard Kovacevich (former CEO of Wells Fargo); * William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense); and * William Foege (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). * Besty DeVos (former education secretary) These are all people who decide on who gets to occupy really important positions in the US government. This is not a full list (but I'm mostly leaving out Trump cabinet members ... shall we say for obvious reasons. That Betsy DeVos cannot correctly judge biomedical test performance, fine. That William Foege can't see medical fraud for what it is, not OK. That Secretaries of State cannot tell they're being lied to for 5 years ... I mean the positions these people occupy and oversee are going to be magnets for sociopaths/psychopaths ... and they can't tell? WTF.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> These are all people who decide on who gets to occupy really important positions in the US government. No, they are mostly people who once got to decide that. Verb tenses matter.
- soderfoo 3y agoHer father held various positions in the federal government [0]. Also, cynically, coming from a prominent family, likely helped opened doors for her and her father; doors which would be closed for the non aristocratic class. [0] https://www.bcg.com/about/people/experts/christian-holmes https://www.bcg.com/about/people/experts/christian-holmes
- red-iron-pine 3y agoThe article is leaving out the juicy part: he was a VP at Enron
- karaokeyoga 3y agoIt's like Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranding itself KFC.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoNow it's just "Dunkin"