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Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

arstechnica.com

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#11

Post by makerofspoons »

misiti3780 wrote: post #6
akshayB wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't recall last time a C-level company executive get into trouble for using deceptive tactics, every S&P500 company does this to some extent. When they get caught, in majority of cases it is a gentle slap on the wrist or given more of a timeout and reallocation of their position. Also unfortunately using public money and delivering a bad product is not a criminal offense, more like being sloppy at what you do. Wi…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

Interestingly Holmes' father was a VP at Enron: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/02/17/4-startli...

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#14

Post by buescher »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #3

The problem is that none of this will work against her defense, that she was not of sane state of mind at the time.

I thought her defense was "we tried real hard and it just didn't work, is that a crime?" I guess "also, I'm nuts" adds some spice to the mix.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#15

Post by throwoutway »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #12

I am actually very, very surprised that they had lab equipment?

There was a second room where they led the inspectors with true lab eqpt while the other had the inaccurate machines (according to the book)

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#17

Post by SkipperCat »

apples_oranges wrote: post #8

The modern wisdom, "fake it till you make it", requires you to make it, otherwise you'll pay for lying to us.

I'm curious, does this case get so much publicity because it touches upon all the tropes of Silicon Valley? 'Fake it till you make it', 'move fast and break things', 'disrupt the markets', etc.

IMHO, this business model is fine when the only things at risk are venture capital and you're trying to sell more widgets, but when it comes to life and safety - bad news.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#18

Post by the-dude »

throwoutway wrote: post #15
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #12

I am actually very, very surprised that they had lab equipment?

There was a second room where they led the inspectors with true lab eqpt while the other had the inaccurate machines (according to the book)

Are you sure it wasn't the other way around?

Weren't they pretending to operate their own equipment while the real equipment was 'behind the curtain' ?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#19

Post by billyhoffman »

akshayB wrote: post #9
misiti3780 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

The point I am trying to make is way things work in US, most likely C-levels and high level officials of companies get away with it. I am sure there are cases when folks got into trouble. Apple had Antennagate for one of the iphones and even with a class-action lawsuit people got like $15 reimbursement. For these huge companies in most of the time amount of fines are more like margin of error in accounting spreadshee…

These are not remotely comparable.

One is a company that built a product with a design flaw effecting only one aspect of the product (cell radio) that was only triggered under certain circumstances (placing you fingers in certain positions). A civil lawsuit against the company caused the company to issue a fix (free bumper case which insulated the antenna) that retroactively fixed all products that shipped with the flaw.

The other is a medical device company that sold a product that didn’t work, giving incorrect results that directly informed how people treated or even detected health problems. People inside the company knew this and lied anyway, repeatedly, and then those people induced and conspired with others to hide their fraud. Those specific people are now facing criminal charges.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes urged employees to hide Theranos’ lab equipment from inspectors

#20

Post by kesselvon »

RegnisGnaw wrote: post #3

The problem is that none of this will work against her defense, that she was not of sane state of mind at the time.

That defense is not likely to work.

The reason she's using it is because the evidence is so overwhelming, there are no other cards to play.

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