A drop of blood in a sea of lies by Elizabeth Holmes (11 photos + 1 video)

She was a fan of Steve Jobs, his success and his way of doing business. She wanted to be the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates: she dropped out of school to build a multimillion-dollar business. But unlike these guys, this wasn't a business - it was a huge scam.





Baby Elizabeth was born in Washington in 1984. Her parents were the vice president of the energy company Enron and a congressional committee employee.

When the girl was nine years old, the family moved first to Houston, then to China, and in 2002 Holmes began her studies at Stanford University, choosing a chemical specialty.

Without waiting for the end of her studies, at the age of 19 she decided to start her own business.



Little Elizabeth

She had money saved by her parents for her studies, which she decided to use as seed capital for her own company, Theranos.

The company began its work in 2003. The idea was this: the Edison device, developed at Theranos, was supposed to diagnose and identify all diseases from the patient using just one drop of blood taken without a syringe. Elizabeth said that she came up with this device because she herself was afraid of doctors and especially of the procedure for drawing blood for tests.





The startup seemed so powerful that very wealthy people invested in it: former US President Bill Clinton, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and the Draper Fisher Jurvetson venture fund. And this is not a complete list of investors. The company was valued at billions of dollars, and Holmes was called the youngest billionaire in the world.

In 2015, Time listed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.



But Elizabeth, according to Phyllis Gardner, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, understood little about engineering, and didn’t understand anything at all about medicine. It was with him that Holmes consulted at first, while the project was in the idea stage.

But she knew how to make an impression: her image of “Steve Jobs in a skirt” worked great for her reputation. Black turtlenecks and slacks were staples in her wardrobe, and when Holmes spoke or had a conversation with someone influential, she deliberately lowered her voice and looked at her opponent point-blank. Holmes actively created the image of a businesslike and serious woman, called Theranos “the iPod of medicine” and argued that very little time would pass and her “Edison” would be in every home.

In this video you can hear how Elizabeth, having forgotten herself, begins to speak in her usual voice and, catching herself, switches to several tones lower

Holmes's story is somewhat reminiscent of the story of Anna Delvey (Sorokina). Elizabeth managed to receive funding from Theranos without disclosing the details of her innovative technology. She always retained complete control in the company and her voice was always decisive.

Theranos company existed for 10 years and was able to attract investments of... $900 million!

The technology was still kept secret, and the startup was already valued at $9 billion. The company had more than 800 employees and was considered as promising as Spotify, AirBnB or Uber.



Theranos began offering testing to the public in the second half of 2013. Many blood collection centers were opened in Phoenix, one was installed in Pennsylvania and two in California. The company's activities were closed not only to ordinary people, but even to employees. Holmes carefully hid all the data and no one knew what the prospects were, whether everything was successful, or whether there were problems and everything was going to the bottom.

This fact was also noticed by the media. Already in 2015, The Wall Street Journal wrote several exposé articles and the story of “Steve Jobs in a skirt” became a story of colossal failure.

Journalist John Carraire was able to find out that Theranos does not use its own innovative equipment for blood analysis, but resorts to the help of outside laboratories. And these laboratories themselves turned out to be not very good and their analyzes were not reliable. And a little later it became known that the “unique technology” was used in only 15 types of analyzes, while the stated number was 200. And all other tests were done on the most ordinary devices.



There were serious violations in Theranos laboratories that directly threatened the lives of employees. And most importantly, the innovative and revolutionary technology simply did not work.

The company that Silicon Valley loved so much turned out to be just a sham, and Elizabeth herself began to be called a liar.

The main thing was that over all the long years of its existence, Theranos was never able to provide a single piece of evidence that the technology was effective and working.



Class action lawsuits have been filed against Theranos.

Pharmacy chains that agreed to cooperate with Holmes' company opposed Theranos. Patients said that Edison incorrectly diagnosed them with cancer or diabetes. It's funny that the same year the company went bankrupt (2018), Business Insider magazine, shortly before that, included Theranos in its list of promising biotech startups.



In a court

Also in 2018, Elizabeth Holmes and her business partner and Theranos President Ramesh Balwani were sued for fraud and faced 20 years in prison. By the way, Balwani was also Elizabeth’s former common-law husband.

The two surrendered to the FBI and were released on bail of half a million dollars each. But they categorically denied their guilt.

The Theranos case was supposed to begin in 2020, but at first it was suspended due to the Covid pandemic, and on July 10 Holmes gave birth to a son from the heir of a Californian hotel chain and was clearly unable to appear in court for some time. Many even suspected, when Elizabeth soon became pregnant for the second time, that she was thus trying to manipulate the jury and the judge in order to get a shorter sentence.



Ramesh Balwani

But in 2022, a San Jose court sentenced Holmes to more than 11 years in prison. Balwani was sentenced to 13 years in prison. They are also required to return $452 million to investors and victims.

Already in May 2023, Holmes, who by this time had managed to give birth to another child, began serving her sentence in the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan (Texas). The court chose this prison so that Holmes could see her children every weekend. Children under 10 years old can sit on their mother's lap during visits, babies can be breastfed, and the prison even has a playroom.



Elizabeth with her husband

In general, this prison is quite comfortable - there you can choose a vegan diet, exercise, visit a beauty salon, study at a local college, and buy something at a local store. Newcomers to work in such prisons are first sent to the kitchen, as the lowest paid job (and let me remind you that it is from Holmes’ prison salary that the debts of the victims of her scam will be paid). But then you can go work as a secretary, in a call center, look after the garden, or even train Labrador puppies.

In general, he will see his children often, have a relatively comfortable stay (considering that this is a prison after all) and, perhaps, will finally learn to become someone.



In prison

Elizabeth also completely changed her image during the trial: black turtlenecks gradually left her wardrobe, pastel colors began to appear, and Holmes’ famous low voice, for which she was so famous, also suddenly disappeared. Now she spoke to reporters in a normal female high-pitched voice.

It seems Holmes has decided to completely move away from the character she was during Theranos and is even asking to be called Liz from now on.