Time.news – The trial of Elizabeth Holmes, found guilty of billionaire fraud with her Theranos, is a Pandora’s box that revealed all the tics and embarrassing secrets of the former Silicon Valley star, crumbling the myth of aspiring Steve Jobs in female version. After 18 years from when, just 19, he founded the technology start-up Theranos, now risks spending up to 20 years behind bars. In addition to the revelations that have already emerged in the past, the media now relaunch testimony and hundreds of pages of documents examined by the court in San Jose, California, during the 14 weeks of the trial.
Its success began with Edison, the device named after Thomas Edison and presented as ‘the iPod of healthcare’: using a minimal amount of blood from a simple prick of the finger, it promised a full range of medical tests, as many as 240 in just an hour. In reality the results were either flawed or completely false. Thanks to the creation of her character, in a short time Holmes was able to win the trust of prominent personalities and raise funds from prestigious investors, attracted by the profile of this young “startupper”, a rarity in the male world of Californian engineers.
As the Daily Mail reconstructs in an accurate portrait, his successful strategy consisted, among many exploits, of modeling his own image on that of Steve Jobs, speaking with a false baritone voice, to have a more authoritative tone of voice. , at times authoritarian, even with his employees and imitating his advertising campaigns.
The process has brought out one real obsession with the founder of Apple, of whom Holmes imitated everything, starting from the lifestyle: he often wore black turtleneck sweaters like him, tried not to blink his eyes, observed the utmost secrecy to protect his privacy, followed his strict diet based on green juice and used Le Corbusier chairs in black leather in his office. If Apple’s late CEO rented a new Mercedes every six months to avoid having a recognizable license plate, Holmes hired a security team to escort her in a black Audi sedan with no license plates. At the same time Holmes has been able to leverage her femininity – heavy eyeliner, bleached blonde hair and red lipstick – to fascinate the media and the public, but above all wealthy investors, preferably the elderly.
First on the long list of ‘achievements’ was Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, with whom Holmes had a secret relationship for years, revealed during the trial through the spicy messages exchanged between the two. The loving and working partnership began in 2002 when Holmes, then 18, met 37-year-old Balwani, a Pakistani-born multimillionaire enriched by the web bubble, during a journey to learn Chinese. Despite having no medical experience, he was named president and COO of Theranos in 2009, only to be fired in 2016. For 12 years the couple tried to keep the relationship under wraps, but colleagues had long understood the nature of their bond. In the company, Balwani made his employees sing “Fk You” and “other profane songs” against the competition of rival companies, also trying to motivate them during the meetings with dancing to the rhythm of rap songs.
Holmes managed to win the trust of powerful investors such as Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Jim Walton, Robert Kraft and Betsy Devos. On the board of directors of his Theranos were former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, along with former secretary of defense, General Jim Mattis, Wells Fargo chief executive and CDC director William Foege. In 2004, a year after its founding, Theranos had already raised 6.9 million in investments and had an estimated value of $ 30 million, which grew to $ 200 million in 2007.
Three years later Holmes claimed he had secured 45 million in funding and that his 800-employee company was worth a billion, more than established companies such as Uber, Spotify and AirBnB. In 2013, a partnership was signed with the American chain of pharmacies Walgreens, bringing Theranos to its maximum value of 9 billion, with which Holmes became the youngest ‘selfmadé billionaire in the United States. Holmes has also been able to conquer the biggest US media: named in 2015 among the 100 most influential personalities of Time Magazine, and that same year, then vice president Joe Biden visited the company.
After the revelations of the Wall Street Journal investigation, in 2016 the US Department of Health and Human Services has banned Theranos from carrying out any blood tests, causing its value to drop below zero. In 2018 Holmes lost control of Theranos and agreed to pay a $ 500,000 fine after 11 counts of fraud established by the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to which he committed a massive fraud worth 700 million investments in the his company. After the company collapsed, Holmes married a young hotelier scion, Billy Evans, and gave birth to a girl last August. The pregnancy and the Covid-19 pandemic have postponed the opening of the process. Not even his dog, Balto, a 9-month-old puppy he has owned since 2017, was saved from Holmes’ lies, always presented as a wolf while it was a Siberian husky.
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