Elizabeth Holmes, 30 year old self-made billionaire woman

[Anonymous]

biggest fraud

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/theranos-staged-fake-blood-tests-for-investors.html

[Anonymous]

Oh, look! Successful white woman, graduate of elite prep schools and Stanford is a fraud. I guess these institutions and her parents failed to instill a proper sense of ethics in her. When will she go to jail?

[Anonymous]

I enjoy this story. I will freely admit it.

Girl goes to fancy school, thinks she can outsmart people, cuts corners, convinced herself of her greatness and now is suffering a public execution.

It's such a shame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I enjoy this story. I will freely admit it.

Girl goes to fancy school, thinks she can outsmart people, cuts corners, convinced herself of her greatness and now is suffering a public execution.

It's such a shame.

She didn't just cut corners. She was a total fraud who just made stuff up.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:80 patents in 10 years. I call BS.

I came in to say this.... The whole platform is suspect and they haven't released any data to be publically scrutinized. They are running LDTs which do not have to go through FDA clearance. You can have all the patents you want but let's see if the have a viable product.

The idea that one can do 30 assays from 25 uL of whole blood is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

I posted this two years ago... Even the most junior of scientists could tell you the bolded. This type of thing is happening everyday. Its actually quite easy to put numbers on a screen a convince a bunch of VC's who don't know science to put up money. I'm baffled that they don't have bonafide scientists as consultants before jumping into this but everyone wants to be in on the next big thing...

Well, to be fair, a bunch of VCs didn't invest. Only one did. And he wasn't a healthcare investor. He did tech. Run when you see tech inventors doing this kind of stuff and no healthcare investors!

My search shows they had numerous investors. But that's besides the point. I'm wondering why there wasn't more backlash from the scientific community. It seems she got her press machine going for several years with no real push back when it was so evident this was all smoke and mirrors.

Seems like they used David Boies law firm to intimidate a lot of would-be critics. No scientist is upending their lives and their own careers to take on these clowns. Hence why it took a WSJ health care reporter to publish the dirty deeds.

Exactly. Who would have a vested interest in blowing this up (i.e., who should have figured this out?)

Anyone could figure it out... The first time I read a blurb about her I knew she was a fraud. I guess I can see her intimidating her underlings but how exactly would she ruin someone's career that's established in an industry when she isn't.

Um, there were a lot of scientists who wanted to get in on this sweet VC money train. Promote her "tech" and get research dollars. It's an incestuous money circle.
And the VCs goal is to hype the shit out of these new businesses and then be the very first to cash out. They let the employees (with their RSUs), tertiary non-public investors (think: surgeons and dentists with $800K HHI), and acquiring companies take the risk. VCs goal is to hype and get paid, either through a private acquisition or a public offering. But even the rise of private placement markets almost negate the need for these sharks to face the scrutiny of going public.

It also disturbs me that mutual funds made the bulk of her investors. WTF are the fund managers thinking?!? Just a sign that interest rates may be too low.

Yeah I get the investment strategy and "cashing out first", I just don't get how the basic premise of technology wasn't laughed at more openly.

It kind of was. But no one takes out an ad saying that the technology is crap.

It's a bit like the Madoff scam. Sophisticated investors either just walked away (because they knew something was fishy) or they invested - figuring that they could exit early enough that they wouldn't be the ones left holding the bag.

[Anonymous]

BREAKING: SEC charges Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes & Ramesh Balwani with raising $700M+ "through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance"

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/14/theranos-ceo-holmes-and-former-president-balwani-charged-with-massive-fraud.html

[Anonymous]

I also find it very interesting that she has been able to settle so quickly but the non white president of the company has not. This was clearly her idea and her baby that she cooked up and the brown guy is going to be the fall person? I can't even say I am surprised.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/14/sec-charges-theranos-and-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-with-massive-frau/

[Anonymous]

This SEC stuff looks like a civil matter. Is she gonna be facing criminal charges as well?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Awesome! Just read about the first woman to win the Field Award (look the Nobel Prize) in mathematics the other day. She is a prof at Stanford. Can't wait to hear about women leading the way in more male dominated areas like computer engineering. And some day most of the obits in the New York Times will be about revolutionary women in STEM fields!

Maryam Mirzakani was brilliant. I was so sad when she passed away last summer at 40.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also find it very interesting that she has been able to settle so quickly but the non white president of the company has not. This was clearly her idea and her baby that she cooked up and the brown guy is going to be the fall person? I can't even say I am surprised.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/14/sec-charges-theranos-and-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-with-massive-frau/

She had the better lawyer. Whoever cuts the deal first to rat out the other wins. Nothing to do with skin color.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:biggest fraud

http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/04/theranos-staged-fake-blood-tests-for-investors.html

Yep. Fav comment

First clue on Elizabeth Holmes? She never blinks.The Jobs-like clothing shtick should have sent up a red flare or two, as well.Obviously, neither was a detriment to her becoming an instantly ubiquitous cover girl for Forbes, Fortune and the rest (The New York Times' very own T magazine, even -- the ultimate!) and All-American darling (And why not? she's both a millennial and blond!!) as the mainstream media were suckered into skepticism-free overdrive while taking her flimflammery at face value.And let's not forget that only two years ago this week, Time magazine was hailing her as a "tech visionary" -- one of its vaunted 100 Most Influential People -- endorsed with a hymn of praise by none other than Henry Kissinger. Indeed.We're so collectively gullible, aren't we?Sincerest thanks once again to the Wall Street Journal's John Carreyou and Mike Siconolfi for the desperately needed reality check and the always welcome reminder that real journalism -- the kind based on unflinching integrity -- is the best antidote to mindless hype.

[Anonymous]

I just watched a clip of her. She sounds like a man?! Something is not right here at all.

[Anonymous]

I honestly never understood the appeal of the product. Sure, blood draws aren't fun, but they aren't impossible or even particularly difficult. It always seemed like a solution in search of a problem. Then to have it be fake in the end . . . just stupidity all around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also find it very interesting that she has been able to settle so quickly but the non white president of the company has not. This was clearly her idea and her baby that she cooked up and the brown guy is going to be the fall person? I can't even say I am surprised.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/14/sec-charges-theranos-and-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-with-massive-frau/

Anybody who wants to settle with the SEC can. They don’t force you to litigate with them. The fact that they settled with her and are litigating against him doesn’t mean anything other than that he didn’t want to settle.

[Anonymous]

SEC Charges Elizabeth Holmes, Founder of Embattled Blood-Testing Firm Theranos, With Fraud - The Wall Street Journal