Elizabeth Holmes is indicted on wire fraud charges and steps down as the CEO of Theranos

• Elizabeth Holmes has been charged for defrauding investors in Theranos
• Theranos is a blood testing startup that promised to test with less blood, faster
• US Attorney's office said Holmes knew her company couldn't do this, and lied
• Indictment also alleges she pretended to test investors' blood for them 
• She and Theranos president Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani face up to 20 years in jail 
• Holmes has stepped down as CEO of Theranos but is still chair of the board 

By Hannah Moore For Dailymail.com

Published: 23:02 EDT, 15 June 2018 | Updated: 09:56 EDT, 16 June 2018

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been charged for allegedly knowingly defrauding her investors with fake blood tests and lies about the product's ability. 

A statement from the US Attorney's Office in the Northern District of California says Holmes and Theranos president Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani engaged in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, and a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients. 

Holmes launched Theranos in 2003, spruiking the company as a cheaper and more efficient way for patients to test for life-threatening conditions, like cancer and diabetes, with just a few drops of blood from their fingers. 

But the US Attorney's Office alleges Holmes and Balwani had sold Theranos' blood testing laboratory did not use any new machinery, instead purchasing third-party machines that were already in use in other laboratories. 

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Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (pictured) has been charged with wire fraud for misrepresenting the abilities of her blood testing product

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Holmes and Theranos president Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani allegedly told investors, doctors and patients their technology could deliver blood testing with less blood and faster results with their new technology (pictured), while knowing that was not true

The indictment claims machinery developed by Theranos 'was not capable of consistently producing accurate and reliable results for certain blood tests', and tests performed on the technology 'were likely to contain inaccurate and unreliable results'.

Pictured: Theranos' 'minilab', which Holmes and Bulwani used while allegedly pretending to test the blood of potential investors

Holmes and Balwani allegedly knew of the product's faults when they pitched their services to doctors and patients, but continued to try and sell the incredible powers of their analyzer, which they referred to as the TSPU, Edison, or minilab, to users and investors.

The pair are accused of claiming the analyzer could perform a full range of clinical tests using small blood samples drawn from a finger stick, and produce results more accurate and reliable than older methods, and at a faster speed - knowing it wasn't true.

Demonstrations of the technology given to potential investors were allegedly 'intended to cause potential investors to believe blood tests were being conducted on Theranos's proprietary analyzer when, in fact, the analyzer really was running a 'null protocol' and was not testing the potential investor's blood', the US Attorney's office said.

Old crazy eyes with the fake voice affectation and Jobian turtle-neck sweater pitching lie after lie after lie.

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Holmes could face up to 20 years behind bars for her alleged crimes, and stepped down as CEO of Theranos shortly before her indictment was made public

Special Agent in Charge Bennett called Holmes and Balwani's actions a 'conspiracy', that 'endangered health and lives'.

If convicted, Holmes and Balwani face a maximum of 20 years behind bars and a fine of up to $250,000, plus restitution, for each charge.

Jeffrey B. Coopersmith, Balwani's attorney, said in a statement his client 'committed no crimes'.

'He did not defraud Theranos investors, who were among the most sophisticated in the world. He did not defraud consumers, but instead worked tirelessly to empower them with access to their own health information,' he said.

Mr. Balwani is innocent, and looks forward to clearing his name at trial.'  

Before the indictment was made public, Theranos announced Holmes had stepped down as CEO, but will stay on as chair of the board. 

8 million people trusted this fraud. The death toll is staggering, making her a serial killer of Hitler proportions.

Theranos told doctors, patients and investors they could test blood with just the blood taken from a finger prick for conditions like cancer and diabetes, but Holmes and Bulwani were allegedly aware the technology was not reliable

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5850607/Elizabeth-Holmes-indicted-wire-fraud-charges-steps-CEO-Theranos.html

"Sociopath" Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Is Traipsing Around Silicon Valley Looking For 'New Blood'

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is a sociopath

Fakes her deep voice, MKultra kitten model, completely insane

That is the question asked by Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton - as Holmes is now traipsing around Silicon Valley looking to fund her new venture, despite very publicly committing fraud (according to the SEC). Let's review how Holmes became "disgraced":

• Lied to Walgreens, using "completely false test results from their blood tests" 
• When the CFO of Theranos found out about the falsified tests, Holmes fired him on the spot
• Holmes told investors that they were going to rake in $100 million in revenue in 2014 despite being on track for $100,000 that year
• Holmes told the press her blood-testing machine could perform over 1,000 kinds of tests - when in fact it could only do one, one percent of the time. 
• Holmes lied about a contract between Theranos and the Department of Defense - telling people her technology was being used on the battlefield (it wasn't)
• She also lied about her education, financial situation, and the impact she would have on the world

Pretty bad, yes? And now she's apparently courting investors - who may or may not bother to perform their due diligence, such as browse her S.E.C. settlement which lists the word "fraud" seven times, reports Bilton.

While she recently settled with the S.E.C. for “massive fraud” as part of the agreement, Holmes is not required to admit wrongdoing, but she has been forced to surrender voting control of Theranos and comply with a 10-year ban from serving as director or officer at any public company (Theranos, ironically, wasn’t public.) Holmes also agreed to return 18.9 million shares of stock, once worth almost $5 billion and now worth nothing, and to pay a small $500,000 penalty. Of course, there is still a major criminal investigation underway by the F.B.I., one that could end with Holmes behind bars. -Vanity Fair

Holmes reportedly doesn't she doesn't think she did anything wrong - and apparently has quite the martyr complex. She is quite insane, literally.
“One person in particular, who left the company recently, says that she has a deeply ingrained sense of martyrdom. She sees herself as sort of a Joan of Arc who is being persecuted,” says journalist John Carreyrou - who helped take Theranos down and authored the book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.
Which is where we get to the sociopath part. Bilton sat down with Carreyrou for a mutual "WTF":

On this week’s Inside the Hive podcast, I sat down with Carreyrou to try to understand how Holmes acted with such deceit, knowing full well that the technology she was selling, technology that was used to perform more than 8 million blood tests, according to Carreyrou, was putting people’s lives in danger. The obvious question to seeing someone act that way, with such utter disregard for how her actions would destroy other people’s lives, is to understand: she is a sociopath -Vanity Fair

“At the end of my book, I say that a sociopath is described as someone with no conscience. I think she absolutely has sociopathic tendencies. One of those tendencies is pathological lying. I believe this is a woman who started telling small lies soon after she dropped out of Stanford, when she founded her company, and the lies became bigger and bigger,” Carreyrou said. “I think she’s someone that got used to telling lies so often, and the lies got so much bigger, that eventually the line between the lies and reality blurred for her.”
And now, Holmes is apparently roaming around, looking for an entirely new batch of investors to dazzle.
As an aside, Theranos was represented by Tanya Chutkan - the judge in the frustratingly misdirected Awan fraud trial, when Chutkan was in private practice. Theranos also hired Fusion GPS to threaten the news media - which is why Chutkan, as an Obama-appointed Judge, had to recuse herself from two cases involving Fusion GPS.

What a small world, we're sure.
 zero hedge

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