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No…not Biden.
I’m talking about Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame.
She is going to claim that she was in a controlling and abusive relationship with her business partner Sunny Balwani.
This is easily one of the most cynical moves. She’s right up there with Roxie from Chicago.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
I have no love at all for Elizabeth Holmes, but ex-white collar prosecutor me thinks that this prosecution is a waste of time. Most of the investors were professionals who had the resources to do their own due diligence. Holmes herself has been so completely destroyed that applying the criminal sanction seems coals to Newcastle.
BTW, I know Ed Davila, the trial judge in the matter, and referenced for him on his appointment to the bench. He’ll give her a fair trial.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
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GR, I agree with you on the investor side. It’s hard to feel sorry for investors who didn’t do their due diligence.
Where I think she needs to be buried is on the product side. She endangered tens of thousands of lives to keep alive a fraudulent narrative. That alone deserves jail time.
If she had been making emoji software I’m with you. But she was hawking medical diagnostics and actually selling diagnostics that were inaccurate.
I for one think she is evil. It’s an interesting case study in how a young person can develop such a personality so quickly.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
I think you’d have a point if the product ever got out the door. But, as I understand it, it did not.
I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness - yeah, and a little looking out for the other fella, too.
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I don’t believe an actual Theranos product got out the door, but if memory serves, Theranos re-packaged existing test kits fraudulently under their own brand name. Does that count as a Theranos product?
Given what’s been written about Balwani, I can understand why she is framing him as an abuser. He’s also 20 years older than her. I would have expected this defense from her, so she’ll need to present herself as a victim. I’m guessing that she will lose her deep voice and embrace a higher-pitched voice with tremulous shakiness once she gets on the stand. Not that I’m cynical about that or anything.
If I were her, I’d spend the money on a mock trial jury. I think that approach will backfire. Balwani put up his own money to support Theranos, and can credibly argue the opposite, that she owned him, so to speak. There’s plenty of video out there that puts her in command. On the other hand, they only need to find a few gullible jurors. And she’s engaged Kevin Downey of Williams & Connolly, one of the best white collar defense attorneys around (Chambers Band-2 rated nationally, if that matters)
Like Legend, I wonder if she’s clinically evil. She’s definitely an intelligent con artist. I applied the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (20 questions on a 0-2 scale, a score of 30 indicates a psychopath). She scored out at a 29 for me, so maybe borderline?
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It has been a while since I read the book by the WSJ guy who exposed this whole sham, but I’m quite sure that the product (“Edison”) itself was only marginally used for a few tests, but that other tests were done by using “industry standard” equipment highly modified to use small sample sizes (remember, the whole schtick was that they could do labs from finger prick blook drops). Those tests were statistically unreliable.
So, regardless of whether it was with her own product, or simply as a testing provider, she perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions that put lives in danger.
The real question on my grievance is whether she has successfully destroyed all of the testing data. Last time I saw, it was inaccessible due to password self destruct. That, my friends, is brilliance on the defendant’s part.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
A jury of seven men and five women have been empaneled, with five alternates, after a two hour voir dire.
Opening statements on Wednesday.
Most signficant question for me is whether Holmes will take the stand in her own defense. Good sense would say no, but she’s a consummate con artist, and she doesn’t need to con many people.
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