Your Test Results Are 11 Years + $400 Million
November 18, 2022 4:22 PM Subscribe
Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for Theranos fraud — Dan Primack & Sareen Habeshian, AXIOS, 11/18/2022. Elizabeth Holmes on Friday was sentenced by a California judge to 11 years and three months in prison for defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company, Theranos. Per yahoo!finance, Holmes was also fined a $400 million special assessment and must surrender to custody on April 27, 2023. She's expected to appeal. (Most recently and previously on MetaFilter, see also Wikipedia.)
1) the carceral state is bad
2) I’d like to see some white men be dealt similar consequences; it feels weird/bad for all the hate on a woman when so many men get a slap on the wrist (at most!) for far worse crimes against society
posted by curious nu at 4:35 PM on November 18, 2022 [103 favorites]
2) I’d like to see some white men be dealt similar consequences; it feels weird/bad for all the hate on a woman when so many men get a slap on the wrist (at most!) for far worse crimes against society
posted by curious nu at 4:35 PM on November 18, 2022 [103 favorites]
Why the delay between sentencing and actually reporting to prison?
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 4:47 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 4:47 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
for far worse crimes against society
What's frustrating is this is just the investor fraud. She was ruled Not Guilty earlier this year for the charges of defrauding the everyday people who had trusted the results of their Theranos tests and had made actual medical decisions based on them.
posted by mochapickle at 4:50 PM on November 18, 2022 [79 favorites]
What's frustrating is this is just the investor fraud. She was ruled Not Guilty earlier this year for the charges of defrauding the everyday people who had trusted the results of their Theranos tests and had made actual medical decisions based on them.
posted by mochapickle at 4:50 PM on November 18, 2022 [79 favorites]
Haven’t laughed this hard about Silicon Valley fraud since Juicero.
posted by Melismata at 5:05 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 5:05 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
JustSayNoDawg I imagine it’s due to her (second) pregnancy, which in itself is a gross thing to do knowing you are likely going to prison.
posted by grimley at 5:10 PM on November 18, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by grimley at 5:10 PM on November 18, 2022 [14 favorites]
She'd better serve every. goddamn. day.
No parole in the federal system.
posted by praemunire at 5:19 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
No parole in the federal system.
posted by praemunire at 5:19 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Her trial was delayed by her first pregnancy. Now her incarceration is delayed by her second pregnancy. If her appeals are unsuccessful she won’t see those kids until they are 10 and 11.
Strategic planning for her perhaps but so unfair to the kids.
posted by Warren Terra at 5:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
Strategic planning for her perhaps but so unfair to the kids.
posted by Warren Terra at 5:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [17 favorites]
Much harsher than I expected, and appears to be out of line with other business frauds who seemed to me to be much more aware that they were frauds.
posted by jamjam at 5:41 PM on November 18, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 5:41 PM on November 18, 2022 [12 favorites]
Never scam rich people, I guess. Or don’t get caught.
(You can still get caught scamming the little people as much as you like, of course, that’s just good business)
posted by Artw at 5:42 PM on November 18, 2022 [13 favorites]
(You can still get caught scamming the little people as much as you like, of course, that’s just good business)
posted by Artw at 5:42 PM on November 18, 2022 [13 favorites]
Rupert Murdoch
Henry Kissinger
Larry Ellison
Betsey DeVos
Walmart founders
Jim Mattis
Robert Kraft
If it weren’t for the whole lying-to-people-about-serious-medical-issues thing I’d call her a hero for defrauding those fucks.
posted by Artw at 5:47 PM on November 18, 2022 [40 favorites]
Henry Kissinger
Larry Ellison
Betsey DeVos
Walmart founders
Jim Mattis
Robert Kraft
If it weren’t for the whole lying-to-people-about-serious-medical-issues thing I’d call her a hero for defrauding those fucks.
posted by Artw at 5:47 PM on November 18, 2022 [40 favorites]
This is bullshit. As mochapickle wrote above, this is not for defrauding anyone from the 99%, this is literally the punishment for defrauding a bunch of extremely wealthy and powerful men who themselves should have known better (or just wanted to be in on the scam). She's being punished for humiliating the ruling class in public. 11 years is incredibly excessive.
posted by riddley at 5:51 PM on November 18, 2022 [46 favorites]
posted by riddley at 5:51 PM on November 18, 2022 [46 favorites]
JustSayNoDawg I imagine it’s due to her (second) pregnancy, which in itself is a gross thing to do knowing you are likely going to prison.
posted by grimley
Please don't pregnancy-shame, since you have no idea the circumstances or choices surrounding anyone's pregnancy.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:07 PM on November 18, 2022 [27 favorites]
posted by grimley
Please don't pregnancy-shame, since you have no idea the circumstances or choices surrounding anyone's pregnancy.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:07 PM on November 18, 2022 [27 favorites]
Her trial was delayed by her first pregnancy. Now her incarceration is delayed by her second pregnancy. If her appeals are unsuccessful she won’t see those kids until they are 10 and 11.
Strategic planning for her perhaps but so unfair to the kids.
posted by Warren Terra
I see this as misogynistic speech. Leave her pregnancies out of it, they have nothing to do with her crime.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:09 PM on November 18, 2022 [30 favorites]
Strategic planning for her perhaps but so unfair to the kids.
posted by Warren Terra
I see this as misogynistic speech. Leave her pregnancies out of it, they have nothing to do with her crime.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:09 PM on November 18, 2022 [30 favorites]
i) I agree that this verdict is punishment for the wrong thing. but punished in PUBLIC she should be.
ii) For all of the people who are sad for her, read Bad Blood - she's a monster, and significantly repsonsible for the destruction of swathes of trust in medical testing and diagnostics (and science in general), indirectly costing thousands of lives and millions of person years of misery.
iii) the same or worse punishment should be heaped on that other fraud, sunny balwani
posted by lalochezia at 6:09 PM on November 18, 2022 [42 favorites]
ii) For all of the people who are sad for her, read Bad Blood - she's a monster, and significantly repsonsible for the destruction of swathes of trust in medical testing and diagnostics (and science in general), indirectly costing thousands of lives and millions of person years of misery.
iii) the same or worse punishment should be heaped on that other fraud, sunny balwani
posted by lalochezia at 6:09 PM on November 18, 2022 [42 favorites]
The sentencing guidelines apparently scale directly with the amount of money at stake, so 11 years is on the low end of the guidelines. So it really is because she defrauded really rich people who had lots of money to burn on the venture.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:18 PM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by BungaDunga at 6:18 PM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
For all the damage she and Sunny Balwani have done to real people's lives and credibility in medicine and medical testing, I'd say while they're not quite in the same league as Andrew Wakefield, they were playing on the same field and had the same disregard for their victims. Balwani's sentence should be equal to hers.
It's a travesty that she wasn't convicted on the medical fraud charges but was instead convicted of bilking rich idiots out of money they didn't need anyway. But still, they got Shkreli for financial fraud, and they got Al Capone for tax evasion.
posted by tclark at 6:31 PM on November 18, 2022 [33 favorites]
It's a travesty that she wasn't convicted on the medical fraud charges but was instead convicted of bilking rich idiots out of money they didn't need anyway. But still, they got Shkreli for financial fraud, and they got Al Capone for tax evasion.
posted by tclark at 6:31 PM on November 18, 2022 [33 favorites]
Echoing lalochezia, you should all read Bad Blood by two-time Pulitzer Award winner John Carreyrou. He's the Wall Street Journal writer who broke the story about Theranos, and he turned his series of articles into this most fascinating book.
As he's said, "I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew." From a later interview, "she absolutely has sociopathic tendencies.".
I won't list all of her many corrupt, harmful, and evil deeds, but I will just say that there is no question in my mind that she absolutely would bring an innocent life into this world for no other reason than to delay her sentencing. The woman looks pretty from the outside, but she is nothing but emptiness.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 6:32 PM on November 18, 2022 [43 favorites]
As he's said, "I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew." From a later interview, "she absolutely has sociopathic tendencies.".
I won't list all of her many corrupt, harmful, and evil deeds, but I will just say that there is no question in my mind that she absolutely would bring an innocent life into this world for no other reason than to delay her sentencing. The woman looks pretty from the outside, but she is nothing but emptiness.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 6:32 PM on November 18, 2022 [43 favorites]
Didn't Sunny get convicted on the investor AND the medical fraud though?
posted by Carillon at 6:45 PM on November 18, 2022
posted by Carillon at 6:45 PM on November 18, 2022
Also, it's a travesty that neither she nor Sunny Balwani have yet to be held accountable for the harassment of whistleblowers Erika Cheung and Tyler Shultz.
posted by tclark at 6:46 PM on November 18, 2022 [23 favorites]
posted by tclark at 6:46 PM on November 18, 2022 [23 favorites]
the podcast of bad blood is terrific too. uh, horrifying but well done.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:00 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by j_curiouser at 8:00 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think her pregnancies were to gain sympathy and avoid prison.
posted by shoesietart at 8:03 PM on November 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by shoesietart at 8:03 PM on November 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
it takes two to make a baby. And she found/married her current partner, who is heir to a hotel fortune while she’s was under indictment. Thinking back to yesterdays Eugenia a thread, being rich especially inherited doesn’t make you smart.
While there are issues with how our judicial system treats everyone, including pregnant mothers. I do think she should spend some time in jail. And a lot more male executives should be serving jail terms as well
posted by CostcoCultist at 8:08 PM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
While there are issues with how our judicial system treats everyone, including pregnant mothers. I do think she should spend some time in jail. And a lot more male executives should be serving jail terms as well
posted by CostcoCultist at 8:08 PM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
Must be some kind of mistake because she said "They don’t put pretty people like me in jail".
posted by neonamber at 8:09 PM on November 18, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by neonamber at 8:09 PM on November 18, 2022 [9 favorites]
I feel like it's possible to simultaneously be convinced of the sociopathy of capital and power, and also feel a little uncomfortable at the flat-out misogyny of some of these comments. Like, geez, she sucks as a person because she sucks, and it's messed-up that this is the reason she's doing jail time, and it brings me glee that she might see a full decade behind bars. Whether or not you think she's pretty or whatever opinion you have on her having kids is utterly irrelevant—it literally has no impact on whether or not she's a piece of shit, and I'm not sure why anyone feels the need to talk about it.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:13 PM on November 18, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:13 PM on November 18, 2022 [19 favorites]
I don't know what kind of a point I want to make with this honestly, but I can't not think about how pregnant imprisoned shoplifters have had to give birth in shackles. The prison system: it's bad, and even when people do bad things it's usually better to do something else about it. "She's a sociopath, how dare she set up this situation where we could possibly be monsters about it."
You don't have to put this woman in prison in response to her perfidy, just remove her ability to use the financial system to harm others, and take away her ill gotten gains. Let her work a normal salary job normal people have to do to get by and live in a modest apartment and send her kids to public school. I'm pretty sure she'd find that plenty punishing.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
You don't have to put this woman in prison in response to her perfidy, just remove her ability to use the financial system to harm others, and take away her ill gotten gains. Let her work a normal salary job normal people have to do to get by and live in a modest apartment and send her kids to public school. I'm pretty sure she'd find that plenty punishing.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
Given the schemes she incomprehensively and brazenly tried to get away with, I don't think it's misogynistic to wonder about the timing of her pregnancies. We're not talking about women. We're talking about a specific woman, known for doing trying to pull off some egregiously awful things.
I wish there were a better way to punish her other than 11 years in the pen. Seems a more appropriate punishment would be to somehow taking a significant percentage of her wealth every month for a significant portion of, or the rest of her life. Like she has to service a debt. Not enough to put her on the street, but enough to make it hurt. All on top of her reparations. Literally make her pay for her wrong doings.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [29 favorites]
I wish there were a better way to punish her other than 11 years in the pen. Seems a more appropriate punishment would be to somehow taking a significant percentage of her wealth every month for a significant portion of, or the rest of her life. Like she has to service a debt. Not enough to put her on the street, but enough to make it hurt. All on top of her reparations. Literally make her pay for her wrong doings.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [29 favorites]
I haven't read Bad Blood so I'll defer to those who know more about this than I do. Perhaps she is a sociopath and deserves this. But it's infuriating to see one person being incarcerated for a decade when so many other culpable people are living free and profiting from the scam of the day.
posted by riddley at 8:23 PM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by riddley at 8:23 PM on November 18, 2022 [5 favorites]
People on that frequently unenlightened forum board Hacker News are making a pretty astute point nobody's brought up here yet:
She was having these children in her thirties facing down the barrel of imprisonment that may well have put her past childbearing years when she got out. It may have been have these children now, or never have any children at all.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [29 favorites]
She was having these children in her thirties facing down the barrel of imprisonment that may well have put her past childbearing years when she got out. It may have been have these children now, or never have any children at all.
posted by foxfirefey at 8:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [29 favorites]
> I haven't read Bad Blood so I'll defer to those who know more about this than I do. Perhaps she is a sociopath and deserves this. But it's infuriating to see one person being incarcerated for a decade when so many other culpable people are living free and profiting from the scam of the day.
Holmes was the mastermind of a criminal scheme that gave people fraudulent results from important, sometimes critical, blood tests! She was willing to see people injured and killed to keep her fraud going and keep a certain status for herself. It's breathtaking, it's criminal, and there is a reason these harsh penalties exist.
But, this sentence was granted in a trial that was specifically about defrauding enormously wealthy, incredibly stupid investors. That is not the fraud that I am really worried about. The dumbfucks who gave this liar money for "investment" were easy marks because they were looking for easy money.
The men and women who gave up blood samples for tests and acted based on bogus results were just victims, straight up. Lost time, lost limbs, lost lives, because this woman and her co-conspirators lied, lied, and lied. Walgreens et al relied on Holmes claims, told victims this was a clinically valid blood test, and it wasn't, and lives were at risk.
It sure seems like the courts are punishing Holmes for those crimes other than the ones established in this particular trial. (Which might very well be above-board -- IANAL but federal sentencing is quite complex and it is is my understanding that it is not uncommon to have un-proven crimes considered during sentencing.
In a more perfect world, maybe her role in the injuries and deaths of innocents would have been the important trial, not the misrepresentations made to wealthy morons who lost a few bucks. (Instead, it is 2022 in America, so defrauding the public and causing mayhem results in an acquittal, but cheating some rich idiots who asked for it yields a harsh sentence.)
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 9:13 PM on November 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
Holmes was the mastermind of a criminal scheme that gave people fraudulent results from important, sometimes critical, blood tests! She was willing to see people injured and killed to keep her fraud going and keep a certain status for herself. It's breathtaking, it's criminal, and there is a reason these harsh penalties exist.
But, this sentence was granted in a trial that was specifically about defrauding enormously wealthy, incredibly stupid investors. That is not the fraud that I am really worried about. The dumbfucks who gave this liar money for "investment" were easy marks because they were looking for easy money.
The men and women who gave up blood samples for tests and acted based on bogus results were just victims, straight up. Lost time, lost limbs, lost lives, because this woman and her co-conspirators lied, lied, and lied. Walgreens et al relied on Holmes claims, told victims this was a clinically valid blood test, and it wasn't, and lives were at risk.
It sure seems like the courts are punishing Holmes for those crimes other than the ones established in this particular trial. (Which might very well be above-board -- IANAL but federal sentencing is quite complex and it is is my understanding that it is not uncommon to have un-proven crimes considered during sentencing.
In a more perfect world, maybe her role in the injuries and deaths of innocents would have been the important trial, not the misrepresentations made to wealthy morons who lost a few bucks. (Instead, it is 2022 in America, so defrauding the public and causing mayhem results in an acquittal, but cheating some rich idiots who asked for it yields a harsh sentence.)
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 9:13 PM on November 18, 2022 [18 favorites]
My first comment was very wordy so I am going to boil this down a bunch.
I take no joy in seeing a woman go to prison but it would have been even worse to see her go free
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 9:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [22 favorites]
- Holmes and Balwani, the masterminds, spent a lot of time lying to investors about what Theranos could do, and raised funds based on those lies. That is what the trial was about, and what resulted in the harsh sentence.
- Holmes and/or Balwani also lied extensively to Walgreens and other would-be healthcare providers -- this was the fraud that caused death and illness in regular people, but yielded no criminal result
I take no joy in seeing a woman go to prison but it would have been even worse to see her go free
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 9:22 PM on November 18, 2022 [22 favorites]
I wish there were a better way to punish her other than 11 years in the pen.
She should be imprisoned indefinitely until paroled. She should be eligible for parole after five years. Instead of a parole hearing, she should have a blood test every four months to see if she has had a change of heart. The blood test should consist of her putting a drop of blood on a paper, that paper being taken into the next room, where someone looks at it and then rolls a pair of dice, pronouncing her as having had a change of heart if they roll a pair of sixes. She should be able to see into the testing room through a window.
posted by Superilla at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [15 favorites]
She should be imprisoned indefinitely until paroled. She should be eligible for parole after five years. Instead of a parole hearing, she should have a blood test every four months to see if she has had a change of heart. The blood test should consist of her putting a drop of blood on a paper, that paper being taken into the next room, where someone looks at it and then rolls a pair of dice, pronouncing her as having had a change of heart if they roll a pair of sixes. She should be able to see into the testing room through a window.
posted by Superilla at 9:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [15 favorites]
2) I’d like to see some white men be dealt similar consequences--curious nu
I know that's not quite what you mean, but her partner in crime, Sunny Balwani, is expected to get a harsher punishment.
posted by eye of newt at 9:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [6 favorites]
I know that's not quite what you mean, but her partner in crime, Sunny Balwani, is expected to get a harsher punishment.
posted by eye of newt at 9:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [6 favorites]
Is it also misogyny or simply fantastical thinking that makes people think perhaps she was unaware that she was a fraud? Will anyone step up to defend SBF this way? Perhaps he really did just make a few little mistakes in his pursuit of what he truly believed was the best for all humankind?
posted by Wood at 10:05 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Wood at 10:05 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
It sure seems like the courts are punishing Holmes for those crimes other than the ones established in this particular trial. (Which might very well be above-board -- IANAL but federal sentencing is quite complex and it is is my understanding that it is not uncommon to have un-proven crimes considered during sentencing.
Correct. They can even consider charges of which you were acquitted. (Which is nuts. For the record. Just nuts.)
I'm fine with eleven years, which is about half of what I think the max prison sentence for just about anything should be. Imprisonment isn't in the calculus for this type of criminal, and it needs to be. If the space she chose to operate in didn't happen to have some bystanders who were committed to values besides wealth maximization, there's no telling how many people she would've killed.
posted by praemunire at 10:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
Correct. They can even consider charges of which you were acquitted. (Which is nuts. For the record. Just nuts.)
I'm fine with eleven years, which is about half of what I think the max prison sentence for just about anything should be. Imprisonment isn't in the calculus for this type of criminal, and it needs to be. If the space she chose to operate in didn't happen to have some bystanders who were committed to values besides wealth maximization, there's no telling how many people she would've killed.
posted by praemunire at 10:26 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
No parole in the federal system.
Sounds like she could get pardoned, then (however slim the chance is)?
posted by alex_skazat at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2022
Sounds like she could get pardoned, then (however slim the chance is)?
posted by alex_skazat at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2022
If you want to feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for Ian Gibbons. She'll never do time for what she did to him.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [35 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:33 PM on November 18, 2022 [35 favorites]
1. For the scale of the fraud the sentence is slightly high end but the judge will have taken into account that this was a long term fraud which could have had fatal consequences and that Holmes still refuses to accept responsibility.
2. Ignore the “Robin Hood” claims. She ripped off the rich because they are the ones with the money (Willy Sutton rule) not out of any form of social responsibility.
3. Are there bigger frauds out there? Oh mate, welcome to the Valley, where Ponzi meets Potemkin.
4. I cannot speak to the US prison system but in the UK the vast majority of women in the prison system are young mothers. For many of them prison is the only support network available to them, which is a damning indictment of our society. Holmes had all the advantages, all the contacts, all the access to wealth denied to these young women and she chose instead to commit a long term, massive, potentially life threatening fraud.
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [28 favorites]
2. Ignore the “Robin Hood” claims. She ripped off the rich because they are the ones with the money (Willy Sutton rule) not out of any form of social responsibility.
3. Are there bigger frauds out there? Oh mate, welcome to the Valley, where Ponzi meets Potemkin.
4. I cannot speak to the US prison system but in the UK the vast majority of women in the prison system are young mothers. For many of them prison is the only support network available to them, which is a damning indictment of our society. Holmes had all the advantages, all the contacts, all the access to wealth denied to these young women and she chose instead to commit a long term, massive, potentially life threatening fraud.
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [28 favorites]
Must be some kind of mistake because she said "They don’t put pretty people like me in jail".
Yikes. I had to look that one up:
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/elizabeth-holmes-sentencing-theranos-trial/card/elizabeth-holmes-brushed-off-patient-risks-they-don-t-put-pretty-people-like-me-in-jail--aqGc0srIBbZnuGAIsDJ4
posted by alex_skazat at 10:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Yikes. I had to look that one up:
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/elizabeth-holmes-sentencing-theranos-trial/card/elizabeth-holmes-brushed-off-patient-risks-they-don-t-put-pretty-people-like-me-in-jail--aqGc0srIBbZnuGAIsDJ4
posted by alex_skazat at 10:34 PM on November 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
Sounds like she could get pardoned, then (however slim the chance is)?
Anyone, in theory, can get pardoned. She comes from a well-connected family; expect a pitch in about 2028 (if a D admin) or 2032 (if R).
posted by praemunire at 11:37 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
Anyone, in theory, can get pardoned. She comes from a well-connected family; expect a pitch in about 2028 (if a D admin) or 2032 (if R).
posted by praemunire at 11:37 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
> 1. For the scale of the fraud the sentence is slightly high end but the judge will have taken into account that this was a long term fraud which could have had fatal consequences and that Holmes still refuses to accept responsibility.
Well, that is exactly the problem: this sentence is largely a penalty for crimes that were not properly adjudicated.
The injuries and deaths that resulted from her massive fraud didn't go anywhere at trial. Instead, this punishment is an addition to the sentence pertaining to the "crime" of parting rich fools from their money, which is rarely punished with prison time.
In effect, for future would-be frauds, every one of them will see a woman who got no real punishment for a fraud that inevitably lead to injuries and deaths, until it started to be a problem for her investors. In other words, if you can keep the pigs at the trough, it will never matter how many ordinary people are injured or killed by your lies.
This is not the message I want American court proceedings to send.
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 11:50 PM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
Well, that is exactly the problem: this sentence is largely a penalty for crimes that were not properly adjudicated.
The injuries and deaths that resulted from her massive fraud didn't go anywhere at trial. Instead, this punishment is an addition to the sentence pertaining to the "crime" of parting rich fools from their money, which is rarely punished with prison time.
In effect, for future would-be frauds, every one of them will see a woman who got no real punishment for a fraud that inevitably lead to injuries and deaths, until it started to be a problem for her investors. In other words, if you can keep the pigs at the trough, it will never matter how many ordinary people are injured or killed by your lies.
This is not the message I want American court proceedings to send.
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 11:50 PM on November 18, 2022 [8 favorites]
This is not the message I want American court proceedings to send.
...you think "walk scot free" is a better message?
posted by praemunire at 11:53 PM on November 18, 2022 [6 favorites]
...you think "walk scot free" is a better message?
posted by praemunire at 11:53 PM on November 18, 2022 [6 favorites]
Sounds like she could get pardoned, then (however slim the chance is)?
If — biting my tongue — the Donald should become President again, Holmes seems like his kind ofgal scam artiste. There's no honor among thieves, but there is admiration.
posted by cenoxo at 12:04 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
If — biting my tongue — the Donald should become President again, Holmes seems like his kind of
posted by cenoxo at 12:04 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
> ...you think "walk scot free" is a better message?
Absolutely not.
It is a travesty that the "injury" of rich men being parted from their money primarily by their own stupidity is, in America, a much greater "crime" than running a fraud that injures and kills people
This case and this sentencing, create a model for a world where you can injure and kill people with your fraud but you will never see any penalty for it unless you anger your investors. That is where we are at.
Holmes and Balwani knowingly operated a fraud that could, and almost certainly did, injure and kill innocent people. So far the only consequence has been that angry investors drive federal DAs to take action.
Now Holmes faces an incredibly harsh punishment for a crime that does not matter that much (separating gullible assholes from their money) in place of a crime that actually should matter (running a fraud that results in needless death and injury)
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 12:05 AM on November 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Absolutely not.
It is a travesty that the "injury" of rich men being parted from their money primarily by their own stupidity is, in America, a much greater "crime" than running a fraud that injures and kills people
This case and this sentencing, create a model for a world where you can injure and kill people with your fraud but you will never see any penalty for it unless you anger your investors. That is where we are at.
Holmes and Balwani knowingly operated a fraud that could, and almost certainly did, injure and kill innocent people. So far the only consequence has been that angry investors drive federal DAs to take action.
Now Holmes faces an incredibly harsh punishment for a crime that does not matter that much (separating gullible assholes from their money) in place of a crime that actually should matter (running a fraud that results in needless death and injury)
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 12:05 AM on November 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
This case and this sentencing, create a model for a world where you can injure and kill people with your fraud but you will never see any penalty for it unless you anger your investors. That is where we are at.
No, this case did not create that model, because this case did not create the backdrop in which white collar fraud is not adequately prosecuted in this country and, of course, had nothing to do with whether Holmes was prosecuted for other conduct. The alternative before the court, a nominal or light sentence, would promote a world in which there are no consequences, period. It's really unclear to me what you think the judge should have done.
posted by praemunire at 12:25 AM on November 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
No, this case did not create that model, because this case did not create the backdrop in which white collar fraud is not adequately prosecuted in this country and, of course, had nothing to do with whether Holmes was prosecuted for other conduct. The alternative before the court, a nominal or light sentence, would promote a world in which there are no consequences, period. It's really unclear to me what you think the judge should have done.
posted by praemunire at 12:25 AM on November 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
Holmes seems like his kind of gal scam artiste.
She ripped off a lot of Rs, though. Open bribery would get the job done with 45, but I'd expect more superficially seemly methods would have to wait for his successor.
posted by praemunire at 12:27 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
She ripped off a lot of Rs, though. Open bribery would get the job done with 45, but I'd expect more superficially seemly methods would have to wait for his successor.
posted by praemunire at 12:27 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
The injuries and deaths that resulted from her massive fraud didn't go anywhere at trial.
I'm one of the biggest Holmes critics out there, but are there actually any documented injuries or deaths? The Theranos/Walgreens partnership wasn't acute diagnostics, it was mostly "health" stuff. I don't think Holmes is responsible for anyone dying.
Don't get me wrong: the risk was tremendous. But I don't think Theranos ever made it to the point where someone was relying on fraudulent results for critical medical decisions.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:39 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
I'm one of the biggest Holmes critics out there, but are there actually any documented injuries or deaths? The Theranos/Walgreens partnership wasn't acute diagnostics, it was mostly "health" stuff. I don't think Holmes is responsible for anyone dying.
Don't get me wrong: the risk was tremendous. But I don't think Theranos ever made it to the point where someone was relying on fraudulent results for critical medical decisions.
posted by mr_roboto at 12:39 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
This case and this sentencing, create a model for a world where you can injure and kill people with your fraud but you will never see any penalty for it unless you anger your investors. That is where we are at.
The alternative would be this case creating a world where you can invite and kill people with your fraud and never see why penalty for it, as long as you're rich, white, and connected enough. The "unless you anger investors" is bad, sure, but the only available alternative in this trial - that there can not be any consequences at all, regardless - is worse.
posted by Dysk at 12:40 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
The alternative would be this case creating a world where you can invite and kill people with your fraud and never see why penalty for it, as long as you're rich, white, and connected enough. The "unless you anger investors" is bad, sure, but the only available alternative in this trial - that there can not be any consequences at all, regardless - is worse.
posted by Dysk at 12:40 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's hard to know how many people were directly harmed by Theranos. One of the reasons that it's hard to know is that the patient test database magically disappeared. What Theranos did was dangerous. An analogous situation would be if I were driving drunk and got caught without actually harming anyone. I should be punished pretty severely. If I were to harm someone, the punishment should be even more severe.
Theranos had no exit plan. The technology they claimed to have was never going to work. It wasn't just that they could make a few tweaks here and there and get something working. Some of the tests they were claiming to be able to do would have required a much larger volume of blood than they collected to be effective. The only way forward for them would be to keep expanding the scam and that would have killed people if they had not killed people already.
posted by rdr at 12:56 AM on November 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Theranos had no exit plan. The technology they claimed to have was never going to work. It wasn't just that they could make a few tweaks here and there and get something working. Some of the tests they were claiming to be able to do would have required a much larger volume of blood than they collected to be effective. The only way forward for them would be to keep expanding the scam and that would have killed people if they had not killed people already.
posted by rdr at 12:56 AM on November 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
> It's really unclear to me what you think the judge should have done.
You are right! this judge could do no different. A harsh penalty for a series of crimes with some spectacularly unsympathetic plaintiffs in this particular case.
This judge didn't preside over all possible cases, only this case. I do not condemn a judge for this harsh sentence, I condemn a system that only makes this sentence possible when the right plaintffs are at hand.
> I'm one of the biggest Holmes critics out there, but are there actually any documented injuries or deaths?
How are we meant to document injuries and deaths from hundreds of thousands of now-known-fraudulent tests over the course of years?
Walgreens, the main "provider" had no way of tracking this stuff. It's a private market. Walgreens wasn't anyone's primary care provider, keeping careful electronic medical records that integrated with every other provider's systems.
How many people died of treatable conditions that could have been caught by a blood test but got a fraudulent test instead? How many would-be diabetes or liver disease or kidney disease patients decided after their joke test at Walgreens that they needed no further care? That is a matter of statistics and good/bad fortune, not "documentation." The nature of these deals was that we can't document, clearly, who lived and who died based on bullshit tests. (That may have been a major reason Walgreens was a good customer for Theranos!)
As a result, it wasn't an easy matter to try in American courts. Some number of people suffered significant harm, and, yes, loss of life or limb, but we don't have the record-keeping to know it. It wasn't inside Walgreen's goals at the time, and now we will never know, exactly, hos many were injured or killed.
(I am not assigning major blame to Walgreens -- they were suckered much like the end-user, just, they had the resources to do more diligent research than end-users.)
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 12:59 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
You are right! this judge could do no different. A harsh penalty for a series of crimes with some spectacularly unsympathetic plaintiffs in this particular case.
This judge didn't preside over all possible cases, only this case. I do not condemn a judge for this harsh sentence, I condemn a system that only makes this sentence possible when the right plaintffs are at hand.
> I'm one of the biggest Holmes critics out there, but are there actually any documented injuries or deaths?
How are we meant to document injuries and deaths from hundreds of thousands of now-known-fraudulent tests over the course of years?
Walgreens, the main "provider" had no way of tracking this stuff. It's a private market. Walgreens wasn't anyone's primary care provider, keeping careful electronic medical records that integrated with every other provider's systems.
How many people died of treatable conditions that could have been caught by a blood test but got a fraudulent test instead? How many would-be diabetes or liver disease or kidney disease patients decided after their joke test at Walgreens that they needed no further care? That is a matter of statistics and good/bad fortune, not "documentation." The nature of these deals was that we can't document, clearly, who lived and who died based on bullshit tests. (That may have been a major reason Walgreens was a good customer for Theranos!)
As a result, it wasn't an easy matter to try in American courts. Some number of people suffered significant harm, and, yes, loss of life or limb, but we don't have the record-keeping to know it. It wasn't inside Walgreen's goals at the time, and now we will never know, exactly, hos many were injured or killed.
(I am not assigning major blame to Walgreens -- they were suckered much like the end-user, just, they had the resources to do more diligent research than end-users.)
posted by your postings may, in fact, be signed at 12:59 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
The lie was one and the same: 'this amazing machine can accurately do blood tests' was both the fraud that put patients in potential danger, and also the fraud that tricked investors into writing checks. There was no way to do one without the other. The reason the charges about defrauding investors held up better at trial was simply because it could be more easily proved that Holmes was personally and directly involved.
posted by kickingtheground at 1:01 AM on November 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by kickingtheground at 1:01 AM on November 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
How Safeway and Walgreens fell for the Theranos pipe dream, Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz, October 15 2021:
posted by cenoxo at 1:06 AM on November 19, 2022
The dream Theranos was selling was enticing: Shoppers would come in and do a finger-prick test, buy their groceries, and take their blood-test results on the way out.More in the article. You can win some, but the bigger you are means you can lo$e a lot more.
For grocery chains that had moved into prescription drugs and vaccine provisions, it was a bigger and better health-related opportunity to boost sales and profits. An archived Theranos menu shows hundreds of diagnostics tests priced between $2 and $110, and major chain stores couldn’t help but notice.
Safeway and Walgreens’ deals with Theranos
Safeway, which signed a contract with the blood-testing startup in 2010, spent nearly $400 million on the deal, the bulk of which went into remodelling 969 stores [archive.org link] to build patient service centers. The company even hired 26 phlebotomists.
Around the same time, Walgreens paid Theranos $140 million, of which $100 million was an “innovation fee.”
Much to their chagrin, the rollout would not be swift and painless, and was mired by delays and distorted information-sharing. In November 2012, Burd wrote to Theranos, “I feel like a jogger running in place waiting for the stop light to turn green.”
The light never did turn green. After Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou penned an expose in 2015, extensive government investigations into Theranos and founder Elizabeth Holmes followed. The two retailers withdrew their deals, ending Theranos’ first public experiments. By 2018, the startup folded entirely....
posted by cenoxo at 1:06 AM on November 19, 2022
How are we meant to document injuries and deaths from hundreds of thousands of now-known-fraudulent tests over the course of years?
There was what appears to be an incredibly competent and responsible prosecutorial team who tried to do exactly this. They pushed this shit hard, and at trial, they presented three victims who were misdiagnosed. These misdiagnoses were distressing, but they did not result in injury or death.
I have a lot of personal antipathy towards Holmes. She discredited the field that I work in. She probably cost my first startup any chance at VC funding. But I don't think it's credible to say that she seriously injured or killed anyone. The stuff that Theranos was doing was in the murky purgatory of heath advisory diagnostics. The medical value was vanishingly small.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:16 AM on November 19, 2022 [16 favorites]
There was what appears to be an incredibly competent and responsible prosecutorial team who tried to do exactly this. They pushed this shit hard, and at trial, they presented three victims who were misdiagnosed. These misdiagnoses were distressing, but they did not result in injury or death.
I have a lot of personal antipathy towards Holmes. She discredited the field that I work in. She probably cost my first startup any chance at VC funding. But I don't think it's credible to say that she seriously injured or killed anyone. The stuff that Theranos was doing was in the murky purgatory of heath advisory diagnostics. The medical value was vanishingly small.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:16 AM on November 19, 2022 [16 favorites]
Judging by this thread, Americans really are in love with locking people up and throwing away the key, eh?
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:03 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:03 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm one of the biggest Holmes critics out there, but are there actually any documented injuries or deaths?
Theranos also ran some of the tests on commercial machines in the back room rather than their magic ones. Since we don't have the data any more it might be impossible to prove harm for any one specific person at this point. It's still very likely that someone was harmed.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 3:21 AM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Theranos also ran some of the tests on commercial machines in the back room rather than their magic ones. Since we don't have the data any more it might be impossible to prove harm for any one specific person at this point. It's still very likely that someone was harmed.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 3:21 AM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Grimley: a quirk of English law in the bad old days was that a pregnant woman couldn't be hanged (at least, until after childbirth).
This led to the problem of prisoners bribing male prison guards to have (obviously unprotected) sex with them.
It's nice to see some things haven't changed since the 18th century and the Bloody Code! /s
posted by cstross at 3:37 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
This led to the problem of prisoners bribing male prison guards to have (obviously unprotected) sex with them.
It's nice to see some things haven't changed since the 18th century and the Bloody Code! /s
posted by cstross at 3:37 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
The technology they claimed to have was never going to work.
I’m not sure that’s true, and to me that is one of the tragedies of this whole situation. We currently have handheld devices that can do multiple tests on a fraction of a milliliter of blood that 30 years ago would have taken several tubes of blood and a lab tech in a roomful of machines to run. Newborn screening programs can do dozens of tests on a few drops of blood on filter paper. So the trend toward more automation and reduced sample sizes was headed in the direction Theranos was long before Holmes came on the scene. Lots of technical hurdles to overcome (for example, with such small sample sizes the problem of contamination from things on the skin like residue from an alcohol wipe become more important) but the basic concept is not unrealistic. But her company made a number of mistakes; most notably vastly overstating both the quality of their product and when it would be delivered. Not such a big deal if you’re talking about a Guns-n-Roses album, but as this story demonstrates, potentially harmful if you are rushing a medical device out the door too soon. But there are a lot of other culprits here. Why didn’t regulatory agencies do a better job of vetting the technology? Why didn’t Walgreens and Safeway exercise more due diligence before investing in and deploying the tests? Her sentence seems pretty harsh to me unless some of the others involved face stiff consequences as well. Although I will not be surprised if it is reduced on appeal, and I also assume she will be at a minimum security federal prison, which is very different from, say, Angola.
posted by TedW at 4:02 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
I’m not sure that’s true, and to me that is one of the tragedies of this whole situation. We currently have handheld devices that can do multiple tests on a fraction of a milliliter of blood that 30 years ago would have taken several tubes of blood and a lab tech in a roomful of machines to run. Newborn screening programs can do dozens of tests on a few drops of blood on filter paper. So the trend toward more automation and reduced sample sizes was headed in the direction Theranos was long before Holmes came on the scene. Lots of technical hurdles to overcome (for example, with such small sample sizes the problem of contamination from things on the skin like residue from an alcohol wipe become more important) but the basic concept is not unrealistic. But her company made a number of mistakes; most notably vastly overstating both the quality of their product and when it would be delivered. Not such a big deal if you’re talking about a Guns-n-Roses album, but as this story demonstrates, potentially harmful if you are rushing a medical device out the door too soon. But there are a lot of other culprits here. Why didn’t regulatory agencies do a better job of vetting the technology? Why didn’t Walgreens and Safeway exercise more due diligence before investing in and deploying the tests? Her sentence seems pretty harsh to me unless some of the others involved face stiff consequences as well. Although I will not be surprised if it is reduced on appeal, and I also assume she will be at a minimum security federal prison, which is very different from, say, Angola.
posted by TedW at 4:02 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
I have zero sympathy for her, except for the pregnancy thing. She is still a human being. Now, let's treat other women like human beings. She's a white, white-collar offender and she will not be giving birth in shackles nor, thanks to the resources she has, losing her kids. Prison punishes the whole family. It's still a horrible situation for Holmes's kids but they have their parents and grandparents, and their father apparently has money.
posted by BibiRose at 4:12 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by BibiRose at 4:12 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Her sentence seems pretty harsh to me unless some of the others involved face stiff consequences as well.
Sunny Balwani is likely to face an even larger sentence.
posted by Dysk at 4:50 AM on November 19, 2022
Sunny Balwani is likely to face an even larger sentence.
posted by Dysk at 4:50 AM on November 19, 2022
And like, CEOs justify their insane remuneration on the basis that they bear ultimate responsibility, so yeah - live by the sword, die by the sword.
posted by Dysk at 4:51 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 4:51 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Given the schemes she incomprehensively and brazenly tried to get away with, I don't think it's misogynistic to wonder about the timing of her pregnancies. We're not talking about women. We're talking about a specific woman, known for doing trying to pull off some egregiously awful things.
It's still misogynistic to assume and criticize her on these grounds. If you can't see that, please try.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:22 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
It's still misogynistic to assume and criticize her on these grounds. If you can't see that, please try.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:22 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
I’d like to see some white men be dealt similar consequences; it feels weird/bad for all the hate on a woman when so many men get a slap on the wrist (at most!) for far worse crimes against society
It's not personal, it just click bait. Middle aged white men you've never heard of involved in crimes you wouldn't understand are not all that interesting. Half the instances on this top ten list were new to me. It will be interesting to see how FTX plays out. Fun times.
posted by BWA at 5:24 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's not personal, it just click bait. Middle aged white men you've never heard of involved in crimes you wouldn't understand are not all that interesting. Half the instances on this top ten list were new to me. It will be interesting to see how FTX plays out. Fun times.
posted by BWA at 5:24 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
I have no sympathy for her. Having worked in health tech and bio tech, I recognize how necessary it is to make an example of her. What would happen if everybody did what she did? Could you even imagine?
At the same time, I will be shocked if she serves any appreciable amount of that 11-year sentence. Holmes comes from a very privileged background, and people of her ilk very rarely see serious jail time. If she does, it truly will be a victory for justice.
posted by panama joe at 5:54 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
At the same time, I will be shocked if she serves any appreciable amount of that 11-year sentence. Holmes comes from a very privileged background, and people of her ilk very rarely see serious jail time. If she does, it truly will be a victory for justice.
posted by panama joe at 5:54 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
If I ever get hit with a dime Imma try that “see you next spring” hustle.
posted by aiq at 7:11 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by aiq at 7:11 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Lots of things wrong with the criminal justice system ... but she's being punished pretty severely, and doubtlessly heavily influenced by the scheme's express heedlessness for human life and health. If her con had involved a social media she'd be looking at years' less time.
Sentences of this length and longer typically involve huge systemic fraud in public company securities victimizing thousands or tens of thousands of investors.
The expected sentence for the kind of property crime that poor and not "pretty" people commit in California (custodial sentence served * reporting rate * clearance rate * conviction rate ) has basically become zero, so if anything this is a good demonstration of equity in that regard.
posted by MattD at 7:26 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Sentences of this length and longer typically involve huge systemic fraud in public company securities victimizing thousands or tens of thousands of investors.
The expected sentence for the kind of property crime that poor and not "pretty" people commit in California (custodial sentence served * reporting rate * clearance rate * conviction rate ) has basically become zero, so if anything this is a good demonstration of equity in that regard.
posted by MattD at 7:26 AM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
If she gets the eleven she can be out by 7 years plus some change. Federal prisoners begin their sentence with 2/3 of their full sentence on the table. If they manage to navigate prison life without trouble they can keep the 2/3 sentence.
If they fuck up they start putting months back on your time.
When people are finished with their sentence they go to supervised release, usually a half-way house, for some period of time until they can get a job and a place to live. Then they have probation.
That time in the half-way house can also be extended if you fuck up inside. As can the probation period.
I have had a loved one go through the US BOP and probation system.
Let me tell you that they will come out more sophisticated criminally, no matter what.
No matter what.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 7:55 AM on November 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
If they fuck up they start putting months back on your time.
When people are finished with their sentence they go to supervised release, usually a half-way house, for some period of time until they can get a job and a place to live. Then they have probation.
That time in the half-way house can also be extended if you fuck up inside. As can the probation period.
I have had a loved one go through the US BOP and probation system.
Let me tell you that they will come out more sophisticated criminally, no matter what.
No matter what.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 7:55 AM on November 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
I'm on team, "crime is bad and criminals should be punished." I also agree there is room for a lot more compassion in criminal sentencing in the US, but Holmes is no Jean Valjean, and 11 years, frankly, seems about right for half a billion dollars of fraud.
Of course Bernie Madoff "only" got 150 years for 70 billion dollars of fraud so Holmes' sentence could be considered very harsh if one thinks that the sentence should be linearly proportional to the amount of fraud rather than logarithmically proportional
posted by 3j0hn at 8:58 AM on November 19, 2022
Of course Bernie Madoff "only" got 150 years for 70 billion dollars of fraud so Holmes' sentence could be considered very harsh if one thinks that the sentence should be linearly proportional to the amount of fraud rather than logarithmically proportional
posted by 3j0hn at 8:58 AM on November 19, 2022
Judging by this thread, Americans really are in love with locking people up and throwing away the key, eh?
They are, and it's awful. It's especially bad when you get the cognitive dissonance in something like this, where there are likely people who are doing the gymnastics of, "No one should go to prison!... y'know, unless they really deserve it, and I'll let you know when someone deserves it the most."
Punishment-based justice systems are not based in justice, but in punishment, and nothing good comes from that. There's absolutely no justice coming out of this. There's no redress for the harms, there's no staffing-up of government oversight bodies that could have dealt with this. There are books and podcasts and Netflix specials and movies and a lot of money to be made off the spectacle, and that's all that's going to come out of it. It's one more corrupt capitalist who got too greedy and too sloppy in the grift, and we will absolutely forget about the whole thing when the next one comes along within a year.
If you are a person who is shouting about how she - or ANYONE - deserves to be locked in a cell, I'm asking you to consider what it is that you think is going to come out of it. How it benefits you, personally, or society at large, and if this is really the best way to do things.
Holmes is a shitty human being, but prison abolition is abolition for everyone, not just the people we like.
posted by curious nu at 12:53 PM on November 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
They are, and it's awful. It's especially bad when you get the cognitive dissonance in something like this, where there are likely people who are doing the gymnastics of, "No one should go to prison!... y'know, unless they really deserve it, and I'll let you know when someone deserves it the most."
Punishment-based justice systems are not based in justice, but in punishment, and nothing good comes from that. There's absolutely no justice coming out of this. There's no redress for the harms, there's no staffing-up of government oversight bodies that could have dealt with this. There are books and podcasts and Netflix specials and movies and a lot of money to be made off the spectacle, and that's all that's going to come out of it. It's one more corrupt capitalist who got too greedy and too sloppy in the grift, and we will absolutely forget about the whole thing when the next one comes along within a year.
If you are a person who is shouting about how she - or ANYONE - deserves to be locked in a cell, I'm asking you to consider what it is that you think is going to come out of it. How it benefits you, personally, or society at large, and if this is really the best way to do things.
Holmes is a shitty human being, but prison abolition is abolition for everyone, not just the people we like.
posted by curious nu at 12:53 PM on November 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
If someone says "elizabeth holmes should not be jailed, but fulltime work off her debt to society, never again owning a single dollar beyond the need to support a modest life, constantly repaying the scientists and patients and opportunities her greed stole, constantly trying to undo the damage to science that she did, until her dying day" I'd be fine with that.
This isn't an argument about abolition. While people are prating about this vastly privileged thief and unrepentant con-artist here, under the present 'justice' system there are about 1,250,000 prisoners in the USA who should be released before we get to her. Let's work on them - almost every other nonviolent felon and miscreant first - and then get to the dregs of the nonviolent later.
posted by lalochezia at 1:24 PM on November 19, 2022 [27 favorites]
This isn't an argument about abolition. While people are prating about this vastly privileged thief and unrepentant con-artist here, under the present 'justice' system there are about 1,250,000 prisoners in the USA who should be released before we get to her. Let's work on them - almost every other nonviolent felon and miscreant first - and then get to the dregs of the nonviolent later.
posted by lalochezia at 1:24 PM on November 19, 2022 [27 favorites]
Hear hear lalochezia!
posted by sammyo at 2:13 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by sammyo at 2:13 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Actually, if Elizabeth Holmes were sentenced to full-time work to pay her debt to society, never again owning a single dollar beyond the need to support a modest life, I'd definitely not be fine with that.
The common response to the question of why we imprison convicted criminals is for: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. One can argue as to whether or not deterrence is effective for white-collar criminals like Elizabeth Holmes; the earlier convictions of Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Skilling (Enron), Bernard Ebbers (WorldCom), and others doesn't seem to have had much deterrence on Holmes, or for that matter on the latest wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX).
I am not saintly enough to pretend that retribution isn't a factor in my desire to see Holmes behind bars. What particularly bothers me about Holmes and Bankman-Fried and others is that they were given incredible opportunities and advantages. Holmes was a Stanford undergraduate and moved in powerful circles, and Bankman-Fried was the son of two Stanford professors and grew up on campus. I do think that people with these gifts need to give back to society, but at a minimum they shouldn't make things worse.
And Elizabeth fucked over everything she touched. Eight hundred people at Theranos lost their jobs. One of her scientists, Ian Gibbons, committed suicide over his role in the fraud. Hundreds of patients received inaccurate results from their blood tests. And as became clear in the trial, Elizabeth faked everything from the beginning.
And so: incapacitation. Elizabeth Holmes is a clear and present danger to society. What, exactly, would she do if allowed to work to pay off her debt? Her one skill, and it's a very good one, is separating people from their money by fraud and deceit. Should she go into real estate? Banking? Investing? Running startups? There is nothing she could do that wouldn't make things worse.
Let her pay off her debt in the prison laundry.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 3:37 PM on November 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
The common response to the question of why we imprison convicted criminals is for: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. One can argue as to whether or not deterrence is effective for white-collar criminals like Elizabeth Holmes; the earlier convictions of Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Skilling (Enron), Bernard Ebbers (WorldCom), and others doesn't seem to have had much deterrence on Holmes, or for that matter on the latest wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX).
I am not saintly enough to pretend that retribution isn't a factor in my desire to see Holmes behind bars. What particularly bothers me about Holmes and Bankman-Fried and others is that they were given incredible opportunities and advantages. Holmes was a Stanford undergraduate and moved in powerful circles, and Bankman-Fried was the son of two Stanford professors and grew up on campus. I do think that people with these gifts need to give back to society, but at a minimum they shouldn't make things worse.
And Elizabeth fucked over everything she touched. Eight hundred people at Theranos lost their jobs. One of her scientists, Ian Gibbons, committed suicide over his role in the fraud. Hundreds of patients received inaccurate results from their blood tests. And as became clear in the trial, Elizabeth faked everything from the beginning.
And so: incapacitation. Elizabeth Holmes is a clear and present danger to society. What, exactly, would she do if allowed to work to pay off her debt? Her one skill, and it's a very good one, is separating people from their money by fraud and deceit. Should she go into real estate? Banking? Investing? Running startups? There is nothing she could do that wouldn't make things worse.
Let her pay off her debt in the prison laundry.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 3:37 PM on November 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
Forcing her to work in the prison laundry would be a form of slavery, and would implicate us in a worse crime than any of hers. Of course, we’re already implicated in many, many instances of that crime currently being perpetrated by our prison system, and Elizabeth Holmes would not add appreciably to our burden.
I heard about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes for most of a year before I saw a picture of her, and when I did I practically went into shock.
Because that soft and simpering mouth combined with her manic, minatory, and overbearing glare made her look a lot less sane than Ted Kaczynski ever did. I don’t understand how anyone who looked her full in that face could have fallen for her spiel.
In fact, she looked like a case of demonic possession, and when I heard what she was doing with her voice, it made my hair stand on end.
Who could have guessed that a business plan straight out of The Exorcist would meet with such signal success in the 21st Century?
And I suggest those who think this is absurdly exaggerated look at the accounts of the birth of the idea of Theranos, when she came home to her parents house and worked without stopping at least two days and nights in a frenzy, creating the Theranos business plan ex nihilo.
It reminds me of nothing so much as the creation story of A Course in Miracles.
posted by jamjam at 7:44 PM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I heard about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes for most of a year before I saw a picture of her, and when I did I practically went into shock.
Because that soft and simpering mouth combined with her manic, minatory, and overbearing glare made her look a lot less sane than Ted Kaczynski ever did. I don’t understand how anyone who looked her full in that face could have fallen for her spiel.
In fact, she looked like a case of demonic possession, and when I heard what she was doing with her voice, it made my hair stand on end.
Who could have guessed that a business plan straight out of The Exorcist would meet with such signal success in the 21st Century?
And I suggest those who think this is absurdly exaggerated look at the accounts of the birth of the idea of Theranos, when she came home to her parents house and worked without stopping at least two days and nights in a frenzy, creating the Theranos business plan ex nihilo.
It reminds me of nothing so much as the creation story of A Course in Miracles.
posted by jamjam at 7:44 PM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Holmes herself seems to have entertained similar ideas when she compared herself to Joan of Arc.
posted by jamjam at 8:02 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jamjam at 8:02 PM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Thanks for that link, jamjam. It led me to the Vanity Fair interview with Carreyrou. Here's the relevant part, quoted in jamjam's link as well:
I stand by my earlier rationale for putting Holmes in prison: incapacitation. Otherwise, she will do it again, and how many more lives will she ruin this time?
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:32 PM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
When I asked [Carreyrou] if [Holmes] feels guilty for all the people’s lives who were affected by those lies, including the investors who lost money, the nearly 1,000 employees who lost their jobs, and the patients who were given completely inaccurate blood results, Carreyrou’s response surprised—shocked?—me. “She has shown zero sign of feeling bad, or expressing sorrow, or admitting wrongdoing, or saying sorry to the patients whose lives she endangered,” he said. He explained that in her mind, according to numerous former Theranos employees he has spoken to, Holmes believes that her entourage of employees led her astray and that the bad guy is actually John Carreyrou. “One person in particular, who left the company recently, says that she has a deeply engrained sense of martyrdom. She sees herself as sort of a Joan of Arc who is being persecuted,” he said.This is from 2018, just after Carreyrou's book came out. Holmes had settled with the S.E.C., had given up control of the company, and had paid fines, but at this point had not yet been arrested by the FBI.
Believe it or not, that’s not the most astonishing thing in the Elizabeth Holmes story. According to Carreyrou, Holmes is currently waltzing around Silicon Valley, meeting with investors, hoping to raise money for an entirely new start-up idea.
I stand by my earlier rationale for putting Holmes in prison: incapacitation. Otherwise, she will do it again, and how many more lives will she ruin this time?
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:32 PM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
From the Vanity Fair article: “Welcome to the Steve Jobs Reality-Distortion Field.”
Whoever self-generates a SJRDF is its prisoner for life, a repeat offender without hope of parole, reform, or escape.
posted by cenoxo at 5:06 AM on November 20, 2022
Whoever self-generates a SJRDF is its prisoner for life, a repeat offender without hope of parole, reform, or escape.
posted by cenoxo at 5:06 AM on November 20, 2022
If — biting my tongue — the Donald should become President again, Holmes seems like his kind of gal scam artiste.
Sad to break it to you, but she's apparently Cory Booker's kind of gal scam artiste. He seems to be completely in her thrall, pleading that she only had everyone's best interest at heart. Christ. Just goes to show exactly how persuasive sociopaths can be, I guess? Especially when they're young and pretty white women. I wonder if she's been using her deep voice on him, lol.
posted by MiraK at 5:36 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Sad to break it to you, but she's apparently Cory Booker's kind of gal scam artiste. He seems to be completely in her thrall, pleading that she only had everyone's best interest at heart. Christ. Just goes to show exactly how persuasive sociopaths can be, I guess? Especially when they're young and pretty white women. I wonder if she's been using her deep voice on him, lol.
posted by MiraK at 5:36 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think it's a good example of how the carceral state is deeply flawed, how "justice" is dispensed with bias towards or against people based on their demographics, and why we need a much tighter regulatory structure than we have.
Taking that last first, Theranos should never have gotten the traction it did. All it would have taken is a round of double blind testing on some of their more outrageous claims to prove it was a scam. That either never happened, or if it did they were allowed to continue selling their snake oil despite it being proven to be a scam.
But it also shows why America's model of criminal justice is completely broken and needs to be not reformed but replaced.
What good, exactly, is putting her in prison going to do? Will it restore money to anyone who lost money? Will it restore faith in medical testing for those who lost it? Will it restore health or life to those who lost it? No.
And that's ignoring the part where our criminal justice system is much harsher towards female white collar criminals than male white collar criminals. Andrew Wakefield is a free man who never paid a penny in fines despite being at least as bad as Holmes. Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsley went to prison for economic crimes yet Trump and Musk et all remain free.
It would be deeply wrong to use a non-carceral solution for Holmes while millions languish in prison for petty crimes.
I'd argue that the solution for financial crimes should be financial: seize and liquidate 100% of the criminals assets less a little to live on until they get a job, use that to pay back the people who were defrauded and to pay a whistleblower reward for any whistleblowers and anything left over taken punitively by the government as a fine. Then give them a lifetime ban on ever owning any financial instrument except a simple checking account and a lifetime ban on ever holding any management position in any industry, including being the assistant manager at McDonalds.
When a person proves they can't be trusted with money or management then take away their ability to abuse those positions, problem solved. We don't need to waste our resources putting them in prison, and financial skill isn't so rare we need to worry about losing their talents if we just ban them for life.
With Holmes it'd be reasonable to also extend that to banning her from having anything to do any scientific venture, even at the level of scrubbing test tubes.
But let's also notice one other thing:
It's just Holmes.
There is no possible way that Theranos did what it did without the willing and knowing cooperation of several other people, all the "scientists" who falsely claimed they'd validated Theranos results, all staff involved in positions where they couldn't possibly avoid knowing it was a scam. And all the financial staff. It's concerning that none of those people seem to be facing any penalties at all and especially concerning that the scientists and techs who knew they were pushing snake oil are permitted to keep working in biotech.
The penalty is both wrong from a carceral standpoint and too tightly focused on one person. We shouldn't be reading about Holmes facing penalties, we should be reading about the entire C level management team facing penalties along with all the doctors and scientists who can be proven to have been knowing collaborators.
But we can't do any of that until we start ending prison for regular people crimes. As long as people are serving prison sentences for drug possession or prostitution or shoplifting or whatever then its not right to start trying to get non-carceral solutions for the likes of Holmes regardless of how egregious the misogyny was in her sentencing or how preposterous it is to pretend that putting her in a cage is going to make anything better.
posted by sotonohito at 9:00 AM on November 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
Taking that last first, Theranos should never have gotten the traction it did. All it would have taken is a round of double blind testing on some of their more outrageous claims to prove it was a scam. That either never happened, or if it did they were allowed to continue selling their snake oil despite it being proven to be a scam.
But it also shows why America's model of criminal justice is completely broken and needs to be not reformed but replaced.
What good, exactly, is putting her in prison going to do? Will it restore money to anyone who lost money? Will it restore faith in medical testing for those who lost it? Will it restore health or life to those who lost it? No.
And that's ignoring the part where our criminal justice system is much harsher towards female white collar criminals than male white collar criminals. Andrew Wakefield is a free man who never paid a penny in fines despite being at least as bad as Holmes. Martha Stewart and Leona Helmsley went to prison for economic crimes yet Trump and Musk et all remain free.
It would be deeply wrong to use a non-carceral solution for Holmes while millions languish in prison for petty crimes.
I'd argue that the solution for financial crimes should be financial: seize and liquidate 100% of the criminals assets less a little to live on until they get a job, use that to pay back the people who were defrauded and to pay a whistleblower reward for any whistleblowers and anything left over taken punitively by the government as a fine. Then give them a lifetime ban on ever owning any financial instrument except a simple checking account and a lifetime ban on ever holding any management position in any industry, including being the assistant manager at McDonalds.
When a person proves they can't be trusted with money or management then take away their ability to abuse those positions, problem solved. We don't need to waste our resources putting them in prison, and financial skill isn't so rare we need to worry about losing their talents if we just ban them for life.
With Holmes it'd be reasonable to also extend that to banning her from having anything to do any scientific venture, even at the level of scrubbing test tubes.
But let's also notice one other thing:
It's just Holmes.
There is no possible way that Theranos did what it did without the willing and knowing cooperation of several other people, all the "scientists" who falsely claimed they'd validated Theranos results, all staff involved in positions where they couldn't possibly avoid knowing it was a scam. And all the financial staff. It's concerning that none of those people seem to be facing any penalties at all and especially concerning that the scientists and techs who knew they were pushing snake oil are permitted to keep working in biotech.
The penalty is both wrong from a carceral standpoint and too tightly focused on one person. We shouldn't be reading about Holmes facing penalties, we should be reading about the entire C level management team facing penalties along with all the doctors and scientists who can be proven to have been knowing collaborators.
But we can't do any of that until we start ending prison for regular people crimes. As long as people are serving prison sentences for drug possession or prostitution or shoplifting or whatever then its not right to start trying to get non-carceral solutions for the likes of Holmes regardless of how egregious the misogyny was in her sentencing or how preposterous it is to pretend that putting her in a cage is going to make anything better.
posted by sotonohito at 9:00 AM on November 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
Lots of convincing words above about the need for sentencing reform and the abolition of prisons, I'm up for that. Given her present circumstances, it would be truly wonderful if a now highly-motivated Ms. Holmes could switch her focus and use the next five-plus months before she checks into Club Fed ("behind bars"? more like a spartan but comfortable college dorm room) to enlist her connections, privilege, and well-demonstrated powers of persuasion to convince her influential friends of the need for a new approach for corrections. Maybe go around like a black-turtlenecked Bene Gesserit using The Voice on various Law 'N' Order state governors and Hang-Em-High judges. She'd certainly have more chance of achieving her goal of being famous for benefiting humanity far more than for her hare-brained scheme for a see-all tell-all scientifically-preposterous physically-impossible mythical magical medical box could ever have done.
posted by hangashore at 11:06 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by hangashore at 11:06 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm one of the biggest Holmes critics out there, but are there actually any documented injuries or deaths?
Sideshow Bob: "Attempted murder. Now honestly what is that? Can you win a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?"
(where "attempted chemistry" is pretty germane to this whole sordid affair)
posted by hangashore at 11:20 AM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
Sideshow Bob: "Attempted murder. Now honestly what is that? Can you win a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?"
(where "attempted chemistry" is pretty germane to this whole sordid affair)
posted by hangashore at 11:20 AM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
All it would have taken is a round of double blind testing on some of their more outrageous claims to prove it was a scam.
I would recommend reading Carreyou's book, which is both a good read and explains pretty clearly how she manipulated regulatory provisions in very bad faith. Also identifies the surprising number of ordinary people who either quit or tried to blow the whistle or both. I have to tell you, the corresponding ordinary financial securities fraud stories (and I have read a lot of them) have virtually no one like that.
At least look up what happened to Ian Gibbons.
posted by praemunire at 3:42 PM on November 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
I would recommend reading Carreyou's book, which is both a good read and explains pretty clearly how she manipulated regulatory provisions in very bad faith. Also identifies the surprising number of ordinary people who either quit or tried to blow the whistle or both. I have to tell you, the corresponding ordinary financial securities fraud stories (and I have read a lot of them) have virtually no one like that.
At least look up what happened to Ian Gibbons.
posted by praemunire at 3:42 PM on November 20, 2022 [8 favorites]
The common response to the question of why we imprison convicted criminals is for: retribution, rehabilitation, deterrence, and incapacitation. One can argue as to whether or not deterrence is effective for white-collar criminals like Elizabeth Holmes; the earlier convictions of Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Skilling (Enron), Bernard Ebbers (WorldCom), and others doesn't seem to have had much deterrence on Holmes, or for that matter on the latest wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX).
These people simply don't even think they have a risk of going to jail because enforcement has been so poor.
posted by praemunire at 3:44 PM on November 20, 2022
These people simply don't even think they have a risk of going to jail because enforcement has been so poor.
posted by praemunire at 3:44 PM on November 20, 2022
At one time, Holmes' father was a vice president at Enron.
posted by jamjam at 4:04 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 4:04 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The previous convictions and imprisonment of other people for similar crimes had and continues to have the same deterrence effect as convictions of others for possession of own-use amounts of drugs had and continues to have on casual 'illegal' drug users. That is, absolutely none. Prison has no deterrence value at all on anyone because nobody who is breaking the law believes they are going to get caught. If they thought they were going to get caught, they wouldn't do it (yes, I know, not 100% true). This is doubly the case with white-collar criminals, who are almost never caught and, if caught, rarely convicted and, if convicted, generally get a slap on the wrist and are back scamming poor people before their court case even comes up.
This case does seem to stand out in the severity of the sentence, although there are so few of these mega-rich scammers convicted, it's hard to compare. It's hard not to see this as nothing more than misogyny, but also possible the medical aspect has influenced the sentence as if people are not hurt when they 'only' get scammed of everything they own.
posted by dg at 4:28 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
This case does seem to stand out in the severity of the sentence, although there are so few of these mega-rich scammers convicted, it's hard to compare. It's hard not to see this as nothing more than misogyny, but also possible the medical aspect has influenced the sentence as if people are not hurt when they 'only' get scammed of everything they own.
posted by dg at 4:28 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
Some sentences are assigned to "teach people a lesson", but that is not the only purpose of a prison sentence. An alternate purpose is quarantine - prison is often used to restrict the scope of harm a person can do to society during the time they are imprisoned.
posted by Selena777 at 4:37 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Selena777 at 4:37 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Much harsher than I expected, and appears to be out of line with other business frauds who seemed to me to be much more aware that they were frauds.
In 1989, Chamoy Thipyaso was found guilty of a pyramid scheme in which she defrauded some 16,000 people (mostly in Thailand) of over $200 million. She was sentenced to 141,078 years imprisonment. (She actually served eight.)
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:57 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
In 1989, Chamoy Thipyaso was found guilty of a pyramid scheme in which she defrauded some 16,000 people (mostly in Thailand) of over $200 million. She was sentenced to 141,078 years imprisonment. (She actually served eight.)
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:57 PM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
I would recommend reading Carreyou's book, which is both a good read and explains pretty clearly how she manipulated regulatory provisions in very bad faith.
I haven't read Carreyou's book (I should!) but I'd also recommend the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (previously on the Blue) for a good overview for anyone with 2 hours to spare (also check out the other MeFi posts tagged with Theranos).
posted by hangashore at 5:14 PM on November 20, 2022
I haven't read Carreyou's book (I should!) but I'd also recommend the HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (previously on the Blue) for a good overview for anyone with 2 hours to spare (also check out the other MeFi posts tagged with Theranos).
posted by hangashore at 5:14 PM on November 20, 2022
This is doubly the case with white-collar criminals, who are almost never caught and, if caught, rarely convicted and, if convicted, generally get a slap on the wrist and are back scamming poor people before their court case even comes up.
This reads like an argument for stronger enforcement and larger sentences, not against jailing Holmes.
posted by Dysk at 8:04 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
This reads like an argument for stronger enforcement and larger sentences, not against jailing Holmes.
posted by Dysk at 8:04 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sentences are out of control. I know I personally would never advocate for longer sentences across the board of criminal charges, including violent ones.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:48 AM on November 21, 2022
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:48 AM on November 21, 2022
There are two reasons why it has been easier to convict on the "lying to shareholders" than "endangering people with quack medical testing".
First, as others have noted, the prosecution wasn't really able to show that Theranos did very serious direct harm to individuals, despite trying very hard to do so.
Second, the company was deliberately incredibly opaque and paperwork shy internally which means that there are very few to no documents where Holmes sends an email to the extent of "Despite knowing that these tests will not work, let's do them on members of the public anyway". Even though it is obviously clear that she is responsible for that happening, it proved really difficult at trial to show that.
On the other hand, shareholder materials were directly signed off and presented by her. She told shareholders to their faces (and they testified to that effect) things which were provably untrue.
That's obviously less bad but easier to prove.
As to whether there are bigger frauds in silicon valley, of course. The difference is most of the fraud carefully follows the rules and isn't actually illegal. Had Theranos continued to claim that they were eventually going to get their system running rather than claiming that it already worked, that would not have been illegal. Whenever crazy Elon comes and bullshits about what fairy dust Tesla might do next year he is quietly followed by a much more boring CFO type to talk factually through the previous quarter's results.
The technology they claimed to have was never going to work.
I’m not sure that’s true, and to me that is one of the tragedies of this whole situation. We currently have handheld devices that can do multiple tests on a fraction of a milliliter of blood that 30 years ago would have taken several tubes of blood and a lab tech in a roomful of machines to run. Newborn screening programs can do dozens of tests on a few drops of blood on filter paper. So the trend toward more automation and reduced sample sizes was headed in the direction Theranos was long before Holmes came on the scene. Lots of technical hurdles to overcome (for example, with such small sample sizes the problem of contamination from things on the skin like residue from an alcohol wipe become more important) but the basic concept is not unrealistic. But her company made a number of mistakes; most notably vastly overstating both the quality of their product and when it would be delivered. Not such a big deal if you’re talking about a Guns-n-Roses album, but as this story demonstrates, potentially harmful if you are rushing a medical device out the door too soon. But there are a lot of other culprits here. Why didn’t regulatory agencies do a better job of vetting the technology? Why didn’t Walgreens and Safeway exercise more due diligence before investing in and deploying the tests? Her sentence seems pretty harsh to me unless some of the others involved face stiff consequences as well. Although I will not be surprised if it is reduced on appeal, and I also assume she will be at a minimum security federal prison, which is very different from, say, Angola.
Essentially the pitch the company made was this: We're going to use microfluidics to use samples much more efficiently and get many different tests done from a very small volume of capillary blood, the way that blood sugar finger pricks work.
The challenges there are:
1) getting assays to work on very small volumes of fluid with acceptable performance. Inherently hard but not necessarily impossible. Needs to be solved anew for every test. The company pitch here was basically: "look, nobody has every really tried to do this because there was no business model for it".
2) Microfluidic manipulation is actually pretty hard. You end up with dead volume and surface wetting of your little pipes eating up all of your sample volume. This is why those paper tests are good, you don't have your sample stuck in a long series of tubes.
3) For most tests, capillary fluid is not a good proxy for the desired variable which is venous blood levels. I am sure that given your profession you know the details of all this better than most of us but a lot of the "this cannot work" complaints have come from that direction. Sugar is a tiny little molecule, found in high concentration and super soluble so basically any fluid you can get to you can relate concentration in that fluid to concentration in the central circulation. Not true (apparently) of many of the things they claimed to test. The pitch there was basically, "We will determine a set of empirical curves that will allow calculation of central circulation levels of these crucial analytes from the capillary level". Maybe this could have been done, but it wasn't by them.
posted by atrazine at 10:50 AM on November 21, 2022 [6 favorites]
First, as others have noted, the prosecution wasn't really able to show that Theranos did very serious direct harm to individuals, despite trying very hard to do so.
Second, the company was deliberately incredibly opaque and paperwork shy internally which means that there are very few to no documents where Holmes sends an email to the extent of "Despite knowing that these tests will not work, let's do them on members of the public anyway". Even though it is obviously clear that she is responsible for that happening, it proved really difficult at trial to show that.
On the other hand, shareholder materials were directly signed off and presented by her. She told shareholders to their faces (and they testified to that effect) things which were provably untrue.
That's obviously less bad but easier to prove.
As to whether there are bigger frauds in silicon valley, of course. The difference is most of the fraud carefully follows the rules and isn't actually illegal. Had Theranos continued to claim that they were eventually going to get their system running rather than claiming that it already worked, that would not have been illegal. Whenever crazy Elon comes and bullshits about what fairy dust Tesla might do next year he is quietly followed by a much more boring CFO type to talk factually through the previous quarter's results.
The technology they claimed to have was never going to work.
I’m not sure that’s true, and to me that is one of the tragedies of this whole situation. We currently have handheld devices that can do multiple tests on a fraction of a milliliter of blood that 30 years ago would have taken several tubes of blood and a lab tech in a roomful of machines to run. Newborn screening programs can do dozens of tests on a few drops of blood on filter paper. So the trend toward more automation and reduced sample sizes was headed in the direction Theranos was long before Holmes came on the scene. Lots of technical hurdles to overcome (for example, with such small sample sizes the problem of contamination from things on the skin like residue from an alcohol wipe become more important) but the basic concept is not unrealistic. But her company made a number of mistakes; most notably vastly overstating both the quality of their product and when it would be delivered. Not such a big deal if you’re talking about a Guns-n-Roses album, but as this story demonstrates, potentially harmful if you are rushing a medical device out the door too soon. But there are a lot of other culprits here. Why didn’t regulatory agencies do a better job of vetting the technology? Why didn’t Walgreens and Safeway exercise more due diligence before investing in and deploying the tests? Her sentence seems pretty harsh to me unless some of the others involved face stiff consequences as well. Although I will not be surprised if it is reduced on appeal, and I also assume she will be at a minimum security federal prison, which is very different from, say, Angola.
Essentially the pitch the company made was this: We're going to use microfluidics to use samples much more efficiently and get many different tests done from a very small volume of capillary blood, the way that blood sugar finger pricks work.
The challenges there are:
1) getting assays to work on very small volumes of fluid with acceptable performance. Inherently hard but not necessarily impossible. Needs to be solved anew for every test. The company pitch here was basically: "look, nobody has every really tried to do this because there was no business model for it".
2) Microfluidic manipulation is actually pretty hard. You end up with dead volume and surface wetting of your little pipes eating up all of your sample volume. This is why those paper tests are good, you don't have your sample stuck in a long series of tubes.
3) For most tests, capillary fluid is not a good proxy for the desired variable which is venous blood levels. I am sure that given your profession you know the details of all this better than most of us but a lot of the "this cannot work" complaints have come from that direction. Sugar is a tiny little molecule, found in high concentration and super soluble so basically any fluid you can get to you can relate concentration in that fluid to concentration in the central circulation. Not true (apparently) of many of the things they claimed to test. The pitch there was basically, "We will determine a set of empirical curves that will allow calculation of central circulation levels of these crucial analytes from the capillary level". Maybe this could have been done, but it wasn't by them.
posted by atrazine at 10:50 AM on November 21, 2022 [6 favorites]
The previous convictions and imprisonment of other people for similar crimes had and continues to have the same deterrence effect as convictions of others for possession of own-use amounts of drugs had and continues to have on casual 'illegal' drug users. That is, absolutely none. Prison has no deterrence value at all on anyone because nobody who is breaking the law believes they are going to get caught.
No, I do not think any of those extreme statements has been established. It is quite clear that the deterrent effect does not correlate directly with the severity of the sentence. No murderer who would murder at risk of twenty years is going to be deterred at twenty-five. And some crimes occur at points where people aren't thinking or aren't capable of thinking about the future at all. Hence the deterrent effect is always going to have a limit and to vary by situation, and piling on infinite sentences simply does not achieve the stated goal. But the idea that people who are coldbloodedly plotting frauds for financial gain are unchangeably indifferent to the risks involved? No.
(I mean, to pick the least loaded case: you've literally never met anyone for whom the legal and professional risks of being caught engaged in weed consumption helped make it unattractive? Do you know any federal employees?)
posted by praemunire at 12:09 PM on November 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
No, I do not think any of those extreme statements has been established. It is quite clear that the deterrent effect does not correlate directly with the severity of the sentence. No murderer who would murder at risk of twenty years is going to be deterred at twenty-five. And some crimes occur at points where people aren't thinking or aren't capable of thinking about the future at all. Hence the deterrent effect is always going to have a limit and to vary by situation, and piling on infinite sentences simply does not achieve the stated goal. But the idea that people who are coldbloodedly plotting frauds for financial gain are unchangeably indifferent to the risks involved? No.
(I mean, to pick the least loaded case: you've literally never met anyone for whom the legal and professional risks of being caught engaged in weed consumption helped make it unattractive? Do you know any federal employees?)
posted by praemunire at 12:09 PM on November 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
Some sentences are assigned to "teach people a lesson", but that is not the only purpose of a prison sentence.
The justifications you usually hear identified for incarceration are: retribution (which I give zero weight to), deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation (yeah, no). For me, only the second and third are meaningful, and I think there's a reason for both to be given weight here. (I'm a pretty sharp critic of mass incarceration, but I don't think we've yet developed a system to safely permit complete abolition.)
posted by praemunire at 12:14 PM on November 21, 2022
The justifications you usually hear identified for incarceration are: retribution (which I give zero weight to), deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation (yeah, no). For me, only the second and third are meaningful, and I think there's a reason for both to be given weight here. (I'm a pretty sharp critic of mass incarceration, but I don't think we've yet developed a system to safely permit complete abolition.)
posted by praemunire at 12:14 PM on November 21, 2022
But the idea that people who are coldbloodedly plotting frauds for financial gain are unchangeably indifferent to the risks involved? No.
I don't quibble with her conviction. But I feel her intentions were quite possibly more on the level of an out-to-lunch, high-on-her-own-supply Alex Jones style mindset than a Bernie Madoff or whoever. This isn't a refutation of anyone's argument or opinion here.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:19 PM on November 21, 2022
I don't quibble with her conviction. But I feel her intentions were quite possibly more on the level of an out-to-lunch, high-on-her-own-supply Alex Jones style mindset than a Bernie Madoff or whoever. This isn't a refutation of anyone's argument or opinion here.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:19 PM on November 21, 2022
Inherently hard but not necessarily impossible.
To a point where you run into physics. Instead of being able to detect x copies of something in 1mL, if you only have 0.1mL of sample, your sensitivity needs to be 10x better; if you're at the same sensitivity, then your detection limit goes up 10x.
For many tests, you're looking at 5ml (or more) vs 0.1mL of sample. Or 0.1mL sample divided by the 27 tests, etc.
Some of their specifications defy the laws of physics.
Needs to be solved anew for every test.
Vigorously agreed.
posted by porpoise at 6:31 PM on November 21, 2022
To a point where you run into physics. Instead of being able to detect x copies of something in 1mL, if you only have 0.1mL of sample, your sensitivity needs to be 10x better; if you're at the same sensitivity, then your detection limit goes up 10x.
For many tests, you're looking at 5ml (or more) vs 0.1mL of sample. Or 0.1mL sample divided by the 27 tests, etc.
Some of their specifications defy the laws of physics.
Needs to be solved anew for every test.
Vigorously agreed.
posted by porpoise at 6:31 PM on November 21, 2022
porpoise, I think what they were claiming was they were developing tests which had better sensitivity to the degree that they could get adequate results from much smaller samples and that for many of these lifestyle tests, wider errors would be acceptable.
Notably, had they tried and failed to do that (impossible or not), nobody would be going to prison. It's not illegal to try to do things that cannot be done but you can't pretend that you already have done something (whether or not it is possible) when you haven't.
posted by atrazine at 2:38 AM on November 22, 2022
Notably, had they tried and failed to do that (impossible or not), nobody would be going to prison. It's not illegal to try to do things that cannot be done but you can't pretend that you already have done something (whether or not it is possible) when you haven't.
posted by atrazine at 2:38 AM on November 22, 2022
At least look up what happened to Ian Gibbons.
Ian Gibbons (biochemist) [WP].
posted by cenoxo at 7:41 AM on November 22, 2022
Ian Gibbons (biochemist) [WP].
posted by cenoxo at 7:41 AM on November 22, 2022
Elizabeth Holmes Judge Proposes Texas Prison, Family Visits [archive.today link] — ‘This place is heaven’ compared to others, legal expert says. Judge Davila says ‘family visitation enhances rehabilitation’, Joel Rosenblatt, Bloomberg, November 23 2022:
posted by cenoxo at 7:20 PM on December 1, 2022
Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes will wake up at 6 am, will have her choice of three subdued colors of clothing, and will be well above the average age of her fellow inmates if she ends up serving her 11 1/4-year prison sentence at a minimum-security women’s facility outside Houston as recommended by her judge.More in the article.
US District Judge Edward Davila proposed the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, according to a court filing. Holmes, 38, has been living in northern California, where she ran her blood-testing startup for almost 15 years before it collapsed and she was indicted in 2018.
“The Court finds that family visitation enhances rehabilitation,” the judge wrote in the filing, which summarized the terms of the sentence Davila imposed on Holmes last week at a hearing in San Jose, California. The final decision on where Holmes is incarcerated rests with the US Bureau of Prisons. Davila ordered her to surrender herself into custody by April 27....
posted by cenoxo at 7:20 PM on December 1, 2022
I mentioned above that her sentence seemed harsh, but I see now that Todd Chrisley got 12 years, so maybe not. Plus, it looks like she may be at a relatively “nice” facility (which quite frankly more prisons in the US should be like) so certainly could have been worse.
posted by TedW at 6:07 AM on December 2, 2022
posted by TedW at 6:07 AM on December 2, 2022
Old thread, but for completion's sake: Sunny Balwani gets a slightly longer sentence (but apparently no fine?).
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2022
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:40 PM on December 8, 2022
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