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Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

axios.com

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Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#221

Post by Maursault »

sharkweek wrote: post #76
dooglius wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "authentic" mean here? Isn't company swag just the company emailing a logo to 3rd parties who print it on shirts/whatever?

I try my best to only procure swag that was actually distributed by the company at time of operation. As an example, you can buy "joke" Enron t-shirts, which I wouldn't be interested in, but some authentic team building event-specific shirt distributed to 50ish people? Oh baby, I'm all ears. I think that's part of the fun, hunting for the original stuff.

> As an example, you can buy "joke" Enron t-shirts, which I wouldn't be interested in

I would not be interested in authentic Theranos swag, but I would pay a lot for a new knockoff mock turtleneck with the old MPlayer logo on it. Now I can't even find the old MPlayer logo anymore.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#222

Post by paxys »

latenightcoding wrote: post #101

Question: could Holmes have avoided all of this by pivoting to something else and not losing investors money. It is extremely common for startups to exaggerate their tech just to later pivot to something else without any repercussions.

A pivot wasn't necessary. She could have avoided it by recognizing when the writing was on the wall for the company and working towards a graceful shutdown rather than doubling and tripling down on their failures.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#223

Post by dehrmann »

paxys wrote: post #140

Guilty of taking a billion+ dollars from rich and influential people who couldn't bother to do the bare minimum due diligence into their investments due to greed and FOMO. Not guilty of endangering thousands of lives by running fraudulent and inaccurate tests under sub-par lab conditions. Our justice system is such a farce.

As another comment said, patients' tests were apparently run on regular machines, so the patients weren't harmed.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#225

Post by SkyMarshal »

sharkweek wrote: post #25

This will sound weird but I am a collector of swag from large companies that have collapsed due to anything from mismanagement to outright fraud. While we're a rare breed there are others like me out there. Still, even with this oddly specific marketplace being small, let me tell you, the Theranos swag market is hot right now (check eBay if you're curious). Wish I had gone big on this one earlier, because I have a fe…

Maybe contact @pud and turn his old https://fuckedcompany.com/ website into an online museum for that swag.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#226

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

bryan0 wrote: post #173
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know all of the details behind each count, but glad to see this result, which seems good and fair. Basically, looks like the majority of "committing fraud against investors" charges were guilty, but the "committing fraud against patients ", which always seemed like more of a stretch to me, were not guilty.

I feel the exact opposite. The investors that actually did their due diligence ran away from Theranos. I feel no sympathy for the investors that bought into it. I do however feel tremendous sympathy for the patients that received erroneous test results.

Sympathy has nothing to do with it. The fact that the defrauded investors didn't do more due diligence also has nothing to do with it. The question when it comes to fraud is whether Holmes intentionally deceived the defrauded party, and was that defrauded party harmed (again, I'm not a lawyer, just my understanding). With the investors that was clearly an unambiguous yes. With patients it's much more of a gray area on both the "intentionally" point and the "were they actually harmed" point.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#227

Post by beebmam »

Sending fraudulent people to jail for a long, long time is fundamental to running a healthy society. One of the reasons the US is a decent place to live compared to other countries is because we actually prosecute frauds and criminals here.

Let's start seeing some other countries around the world start doing this, like India, Russia, and China. My 80 year old mother was recently tricked into wiring money by Indian scammers threatening her. I'm really sick of this shit.

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#228

Post by thyrox »

Sorry this is for my own curiosity because I know nothing about US legal system, but I was watching this documentary recently about Bikram Choudhury, a yoga guru who was being prosecuted for several sex crimes and also had an arrest warrant issued against him. But in the documentary he successfully managed flee to Thailand then Mexico. They even managed to track him but he just said fuck off and that was that. Did not face any jail time and now he is back to conducting his Yoga sessions.

My point is what stopped Elizabeth Holmes from doing something like this? She surely knew what was coming her way and she is kinda unscrupulous too, so why didn't she run?

Re: Elizabeth Holmes found guilty

#229

Post by throwawaylinux »

paxys wrote: post #207
throwawaylinux wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was not found guilty on any charges of harming or swindling patients. This was about the wealthy investors. They will come after you whether you fake medical devices or bombs.

The Justice Department was only interested in the case because Theranos operated in a highly regulated industry with lots of government oversight. SaaS and consumer tech startup founders lie and cheat and blow up investor money every day and no one really cares. All the wealthy investors gain nothing from Holmes going to jail. In fact the lengthy trial only drags them into the spotlight, which they'd rather stay clea…

> The Justice Department was only interested in the case because Theranos operated in a highly regulated industry with lots of government oversight.

I don't think so. I think there were very powerful investors and others associated with the company (like board members) who were stung and embarrassed.

> SaaS and consumer tech startup founders lie and cheat and blow up investor money every day and no one really cares.

Do you have any roughly equivalent examples on the scale of the fraud and the people associated?

> All the wealthy investors gain nothing from Holmes going to jail. In fact the lengthy trial only drags them into the spotlight, which they'd rather stay clear of.

I disagree with this too. It's a good way to clear their names as it were ("we aren't greedy gullible idiots, she tricked us"), and a great way to send a message not to cross the ruling class.

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