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U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

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Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#151

Post by maxxxxx »

api wrote: post #143
atombender wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interview with John Carreyrou [1], the Wall Street Journal journalist who is largely responsible for exposing Theranos, goes into a lot of detail. It's long, so if you want a shorter answer, jump to the question "What technology did Theranos actually develop?": Basically there were three iterations of the technology. The first one used microfluidics, which are basically the repurposing of the micro-fabrication t…

> The short answer is her Jobs-like "reality distortion field" -- she was exceedingly good at convincing ... Considering this and the lack of substance behind her claims, I would personally bet money that she is a clinical psychopath. The most disturbing thing I have ever observed about human beings is our tendency to follow psychopaths. Psychopaths seem to have this gravity around them and people just fall into line…

I remember reading that a lot of CEOs and generally people in leadership positions have psychopathic traits. This probably is an asset if it's balanced by other traits.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#152

Post by msbarnett »

coldtea wrote: post #37
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

> From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. So, just like most VC favorite startups?

Sure. That part wasn't even illegal. The early investors were honestly told that Theranos was trying to invent a microfluidics solution.

It crossed over into serious fraud when they stopped taking money to develop an approach, and started taking money on the pretence that they had developed an approach, when in fact they were just lying and performing the tests on commercial equipment they'd quietly bought elsewhere and hacked to use smaller samples (with resulting extremely poor accuracy).

And then they really fucked up when they doubled-down on this fraud by showing FDA inspectors a sham microfluidics lab instead of the actual working lab that just used standard equipment they'd quietly bought through various shells.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#153

Post by atombender »

anoncoward111 wrote: post #146

So I mean like, fraud is definitely not a good thing, but COUNTLESS government contractors committed outright fraud and embezzlement during the Iraq War, and none of them were ever held accountable. One of them even made 8 billion USD completely disappear from the "Iraq Reconstruction Fund".

How is this whataboutism relevant?

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#154

Post by marme »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

It was all ideas and plans. They built machines that performed significantly worse than standard tests. Their idea was one machine to run virtually all blood tests with a few drops of blood, their final machine only ran a handful of tests and was so inaccurate that only reason the FDA did not shut them down instantly is they used a loophole to claim it was not a testing machine but just in house lab equipment to assist with testing or some nonsense that meant they did not need FDA to sign off on the machine. Holmes was just a smooth talker and convinced everyone, it also helped that she had major players on her board and even Bill Clinton was supporting her.

The one really weird thing i noticed about her is she never blinks. Watch her give talks and it is like a robot never blinking

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#155

Post by anoncoward111 »

atombender wrote: post #153
anoncoward111 wrote: post #146

So I mean like, fraud is definitely not a good thing, but COUNTLESS government contractors committed outright fraud and embezzlement during the Iraq War, and none of them were ever held accountable. One of them even made 8 billion USD completely disappear from the "Iraq Reconstruction Fund".

How is this whataboutism relevant?

Because many people smoke weed, but only some are jailed for it.

THAT'S why whataboutism is important. Enforcement bias.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#156

Post by notlob »

KSS42 wrote: post #129
icebraining wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any fanboyism; I see interest, and surprise at the composition of the board. A bit down, I see strong criticism by medman77, who hasn't been downvoted.

medman77 created his/her account that day and only ever posted that one comment. I wonder if he/she was from Nanomix (nano.com, another company working on similar technology since 2000)

An interesting observation is that medman77 would seem to be particular about FDA clearance vs approval, which is one sign of someone who does know what they’re talking about.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#157

Post by dreamcompiler »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

> It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect money but without even the faintest idea how to produce one In America, it's perfectly legal to say "I'm going to make an antimatter drive; give me a million dollars." It's illegal to say "I have a working antimatter drive prototype; give me a million dollars." Holmes and Balwani did the latter.

Their malfeasance was worse than that. Their "invention" gave people wrong information about their health, which in some cases put their lives in jeopardy. And they operated in a highly-regulated marketplace and tried to evade government oversight. These two aspects of Theranos put their fraud into a much more serious category than that of a typical narcissist-led SV vaporware company.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#158

Post by meowface »

atombender wrote: post #144
meowface wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a typical SV case of "fake it til you make it", except instead of risking a down website or burned investor, they risked harm and death of patients. She clearly had some knowledge and strategy about the technology and likely fully intended for it to be successful, but responded to delays and difficulties with deception rather than just admitting it was harder than they expected. "If we just get over thi…

They did start with legitimate attempts at implementing th technology needed to microfluidics (though apparently Holmes knew nothing about the field and didn't even know anything about existing players such as Abaxis, who actually had working machines). However, they could not get the technology to work and abandoned several development paths in favour of a less ambitious approach that, among other things, involved d…

>They knew it didn't work, but kept selling it anyway, which is where it went from just faking it to outright fraud.

I'm playing Devil's advocate and not justifying or defending their fraud and the physical harm they caused, but if we were to look at Holmes' intentions, I'm suspecting it was something like "we just need to do this for a few months/years until our technology works", rather than "let's just run this scam forever and get rich". As for how close they actually were to developing that technology (and assuming most of their talent didn't leave) or if it was even possible for them, who knows. And of course, regardless, they still intended to commit fraud and should pay the price.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#159

Post by everdev »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

I have a book called "The Creator's Code" [2015] that praises Elizabeth Holmes right along side other successful SV entrepreneurs like Musk, Hoffman, Thiel and others, diving deep into their story of how they became successful.

Back in 2015, it was the same story they told investors: We can do an expensive blood test for a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time with better accuracy.

Unfortunately, it sounds like they defrauded investors with false claims, which is why they were able to get so much funding without a real, viable product.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#160

Post by seibelj »

mchannon wrote: post #80
smallgovt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on your experience with indictments like this? It rings true to me that, in general, the average person would have much more compassion for 'bad' people in 'bad' situations if they could live a day in their shoes.

[site redacted] Eerily similar experience, down to the charges and the 11 counts. I don't disagree, but the average person on a jury just does what the lady in the skirtsuit tells them to do so they can get out of there. Most people you want on a jury throw away their summons with zero risk to the practice.

I looked into your case a bit and I agree your sentence is unduly harsh. You fraudently redeemed rewards for a bunch of fake people and make $100k, I don’t feel like this warranted everything that happened to you and your family. Sucks to be made an example of :/
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