U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by zeth___ » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #17

jaredhansen wrote: post #13

While Theranos was flying high, much was made of the company's connections to DC power elite - Kissenger on the board, etc.[1]. And the implication usually seemed to be that the deep bench of Serious And Important And Powerful People allowed the company to get away with things that otherwise would not have been possible. I think it's worth pausing to consider: when's the last time you heard of a startup CEO/CTO team…

> I do have to wonder whether the degree of attention from the DOJ has more to do with avenging the reputational and possibly financial losses of those same board members The response to evidence against a conspiracy theory is not to flip the conspiracy theory. If you defraud investors out of billions of dollars and lie to Medicare and Streisand effect the Wall Street Journal when it investigates you, you're going to…

The banking crisis says otherwise.

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

#252

Post by delbel » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:10 AM UTC

kwindla wrote: post #233

GW150914 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably helped that her mother was a congressional staffer and her father was a USAID exec.

According to the John Carreyrou book, not so much her parents, but an early and enthusiastic sponsorship from an influential Stanford professor, combined with a truly outlier ability to network with and impress powerful people. She accumulated an amazing amount of social proof, which she used to stockpile more social proof, ad infinitum.

Being extremely charming and likable is a giveaway for a psychopath.

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

#253

Post by golemiprague » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:12 AM UTC

I wonder how much of it is due to the fact she is a woman? The politicians who supported and financed this company were desperate for a successful female founder to justify their political theories. It looks to me like there is some correlation between the failure of this company and the failure of Hillary to win the election but I can't put my finger on what exactly it is.

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

#254

Post by mhneu » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:16 AM UTC

kwindla wrote: post #233

GW150914 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably helped that her mother was a congressional staffer and her father was a USAID exec.

According to the John Carreyrou book, not so much her parents, but an early and enthusiastic sponsorship from an influential Stanford professor, combined with a truly outlier ability to network with and impress powerful people. She accumulated an amazing amount of social proof, which she used to stockpile more social proof, ad infinitum.

Didn’t Carryrou’s WSJ stories say that her parents’ govt connections pulled in Schultz and got her connected to the military? I remember his reporting implying that a lot of the money Theranos raised seemed like it came in expecting military applications and thus military contracts. Which the military board (that her parents connected her with initially) would have helped with.

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

#255

Post by mhneu » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:17 AM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #166

api wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 don't know about Holmes (other than having read Carreyrou's book) but I've been around pathological, charismatic narcissists enough to be as fascinated as you at their ability to lie to the face of very accomplished people and be completely believed. It's almost like executives need a training course in spotting and dealing with them.

The old quote “The hardest thing to fake is sincerity”.

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

#256

Post by briandear » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:20 AM UTC

atombender wrote: post #93

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…

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…

Except, unlike Jobs, she couldn’t actually execute. The Jobs distortion field wasn’t a parlor trick, he was able to actually create the reality. Holmes was unlike Jobs in every way other than in her own mind. Look at all of the products that came from Jobs’s distortion field. Look at the wasteland of false promises resulting from Theranos. She was selling lemonade and calling it vodka.

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

#257

Post by paulddraper » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:21 AM UTC

mhneu wrote: post #238

Excellent news for American society. “The Chickenshit Club” by Eisinger recently explained why the lack of criminal charges had emboldened white collar crime. Basically, individuals need to have the risk of criminal charges if they do something very egregious - they need to have skin in the game. The US Justice Dept has in the past two decades largely only been fining corporations. And so companies estimate risk and…

> the US can’t retrospectively prosecute bankers

AFAIK there were poor decisions and bad investments but not straight up fraud.

Nobody needed to be jailed; there were a few that needed to be allowed to fail.

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

#258

Post by bitmapbrother » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:23 AM UTC

Here's Tim Draper's interview on CNBC telling people in 2018 that Elizabeth Holmes is an icon and hero. He was an early investor in Theranos and likely responsible for bringing in a lot of the major investors. As far as I'm concerned he should also be investigated for his part in this massive fraud.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/10/vc-draper-theranos-fou...

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

#259

Post by saalweachter » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:25 AM UTC

dralley wrote: post #212

maxxxxx wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That guy is nuts. It scares me that with his money he has a lot of influence.

This is a general issue. See also: Thiel, the Mercer's, the Koch's, Sheldon Adelson, the Illinois Democratic political machine, the Harry Reid Nevada political machine, etc.

Are there still functional political machines in the US? The Chicago machine survived the 40's but was killed by the Shakman Decrees 20 years ago.

(There's still a formidable political party to be sure and a bit of graft wouldn't surprise me, but it seems almost sarcastic to compare that to eg the New Deal political machine, or the Chicago machine of ol'.)

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

#260

Post by brohee » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 1:27 AM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #75

mchannon wrote: post #43

I have been in this exact place before. For the two of them, this day will be just about the worst of their lives. This is ordinarily when hard-core criminals are taken into custody. If their experience was like mine, they had to show up in front of a magistrate with their lawyers, plead not guilty, then go to a dungeon for about 30 minutes while they get handcuffed, fingerprinted, mugshotted, and DNA-swabbed. Then,…

I feel like you are playing the victim in this situation. Tone is hard to read through text so please forgive me if I misread your factual statements based on your own experience. Both of these people fully deserve what’s coming to them. They lied to investors, they lied again to investors to keep the company afoalt, and above all they seriously jepordized medical results. It’s one thing to challenge status quo or ev…

Fuck their investors (which would have been saved the pain by giving some money to a real scientist during their due diligence), their customers were actually patients, just imagine the life altering decisions you can make or not based on wrong tests...