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The United States v. Elizabeth Holmes

The trial of the Theranos founder throws a spotlight on tech stardom, start-up culture and Silicon Valley hubris.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

[music]

Today: The saga of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes. As her highly anticipated trial gets underway, my colleague Erin Griffith explores what we’re learning about tech start-up, start-up culture and the nature of Silicon Valley.

It’s Thursday, September 16.

Erin, you are one of the few reporters who’s been allowed to cover this trial from inside the courtroom. So set the scene for us. What has that been like?

erin griffith

So outside the courtroom is kind of chaos. There was a line that started in the dark at 4:30 in the morning on the first day of the opening arguments last week.

michael barbaro

Wow.

erin griffith

I showed up at 5:00, and I was already pretty far back in the line. There are reporters. There are people waiting in line for reporters. There are members of the community who are curious. There were a few Holmes fans that were dressed in what looked like a costume of kind of the way she dressed, with her blonde hair and black suits. So they were there supporting her.

michael barbaro

Huh.

erin griffith

And there are just cameras everywhere. And so when lawyers walk in, when she walks in, there are camera people just sprinting, surrounding her.

archived recording

Ready to get this underway?

erin griffith

There was a guy wearing a helmet and a GoPro taking pictures. I mean, so it’s just kind of chaos going in and out. But once you get into the courtroom, it’s this very quiet, beige room that’s packed with people. You can kind of hear laptops clacking. People are kind of whispering amongst themselves. And in the center of the room, Elizabeth Holmes is sitting at a table with a bunch of lawyers around her. She’s whispering to them.

I’m sitting there a few rows back, just looking at the back of her head. She’s wearing a gray suit. She’s looking around, occasionally waving or looking back at her family members, who are in the gallery with the rest of us. And so I’m obviously eager to try to fathom what is going on in her head. I mean, that’s difficult. She’s wearing a mask and, you know, she hasn’t testified, and it’s not clear whether she will or not. But you know this is not where she saw herself ending up.

[music]

michael barbaro

And describe the charges against her, what this trial is technically about.

erin griffith

So the United States has charged Elizabeth Holmes with 12 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. So the case is essentially she lied and misled investors in order to get money for Theranos — her blood testing start-up — which raised more than $700 million and came to be worth $9 billion.

michael barbaro

Mhm.

erin griffith

But beyond that, this case is being held up as kind of a symbol and a referendum on the culture of Silicon Valley, which often encourages visionary founders like Elizabeth Holmes to fake it till they make it — to exaggerate and use hype and sort of create this grand vision of the future that may or may not be true — on the way to building the next Facebook or Apple or Google.

And so Elizabeth Holmes was following the same playbook that allowed Silicon Valley to create some of the most powerful companies in the world right now. So the question at the center of this trial is: When is fake it till you make it OK, and results in all of the success stories that we know, and when does it become fraud?

michael barbaro

So with that in mind, remind us of the story of Elizabeth Holmes and of her company, Theranos, and how that fits into this culture that you just described of Silicon Valley.

erin griffith

Right. So she went to Stanford, which is the beating heart of Silicon Valley.

michael barbaro

Right.

erin griffith

And she dropped out, as many of our most famous and successful entrepreneurs did. And she started Theranos around the age of 19, in 2003.

michael barbaro

Wow.

erin griffith

And you know, she had a really big vision.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

I’ve always believed that, when people find what they’re truly passionate about and they make a decision to do that and stick with that, they can build great things.

erin griffith

And that is, of course, key to the Silicon Valley playbook. You have to pitch not just, I am going to make one little incremental improvement in the world. I’m going to transform the world with my grand idea. And her idea was —

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

My life’s work is in being able to leverage technology to totally transform the cost structure of testing.

erin griffith

— to make blood testing faster, cheaper and more accessible to more people.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

So that people who don’t have insurance can begin to get access to the information they need to be able to make decisions about their health that can change outcomes.

erin griffith

And it makes a lot of sense. I mean, in order to get your blood tested, you have to go to a lab. You have to have a big needle stuck in you. They take a lot of blood.

michael barbaro

Right.

erin griffith

It’s not cheap. It can take a long time. And not a lot of people like to do it.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

Health care in our country today is the leading cause of bankruptcy, and the lack of it the leading cause of the suffering that’s associated with saying goodbye too soon.

erin griffith

And so you can see the value in what she was pitching.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

By making it possible for every lab test to be affordable for every person —

erin griffith

She was pitching a machine that essentially would test almost any test that you wanted to do very quickly, very cheaply, with just a finger stick of blood — so a tiny little prick on your finger.

michael barbaro

Hm. No needle.

erin griffith

Yes.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

And we’ve done that by making it possible to do any lab test from a tiny drop of blood from a finger, instead of having big needles stuck in your arm and tubes and tubes of blood taken out.

erin griffith

And so Theranos had these little things that they called nanotainers that would contain this tiny little drop of blood, and you could do all these tests on Theranos machines with it. You could get tested and, in a couple hours, you could find out your thyroid levels.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

So we’ve built what we call our wellness centers, which are our service centers, so that people can go get a test done after work or on a weekend, and begin to engage in this process of getting information about their bodies, which can change their life.

[APPLAUSE]

erin griffith

The grand idea, really, was that consumers could be in charge of their own health care. They could go and order their own lab tests, and sort of take control of their medical decisions. So that’s a really big idea.

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

How could we help to create a world in which people don’t have to say goodbye too soon?

erin griffith

And so a lot of investors got very excited about that, and a lot of them bought into her personally. She was cultivating this sort of esoteric image that you kind of hear about from a lot of other male tech founders. You know, she wore the same outfit every day. She dressed like Steve Jobs in black turtlenecks. She talked about how she never slept. She was deeply passionate about this, and anyone that she spoke to about it really got sucked in by her vision.

archived recording

How do you make people believe in you?

archived recording (elizabeth holmes)

How do you make people believe in you? I think you have to believe in yourself.

erin griffith

So a lot of investors were really excited about this idea, and really excited about Elizabeth Holmes and her passion for it. I mean, one part of that is that she was a woman, and she’s being positioned as the next Steve Jobs. And there are so few prominent women in tech that I think a lot of people were just really excited to see her succeed.

archived recording

Have you seen the technology?

archived recording (tim draper)

Oh, yeah. I’ve done it.

archived recording

You’ve seen it.

archived recording (tim draper)

I’ve done it.

archived recording

And there were 50 tests run on —

archived recording (tim draper)

50 tests on —

archived recording

— one drop of blood.

archived recording (tim draper)

— two drops.

archived recording

Two drops of blood.

archived recording (tim draper)

Two drops.

erin griffith

Tim Draper, who is a prominent investor in the Valley, was an early backer.

archived recording

Do you trust the results?

archived recording (tim draper)

Yeah, I do.

archived recording

Would you back your life?

archived recording (tim draper)

Yeah, I do, because they came up — yeah, they came up similar to the test results that I had in the doctor’s office.

erin griffith

She managed to get a lot of very powerful, very wealthy people on board. One of the first was George Shultz, who’s a former secretary of state.

archived recording (george shultz)

When John brought her over about three years ago, I looked at her and I said, well, we’re about to have a meeting with a friend of my granddaughter.

[LAUGHTER]

As soon as she started talking, I did a double take.

erin griffith

He then recruited a lot of other people from the upper echelons of the government — retired four-star general James Mattis, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, David Boies, who’s a very powerful litigator, William Frist, a former senator. And the list goes on and on. And these men all sat on her board.

michael barbaro

That’s a very prestigious board.

erin griffith

Yeah, and they were all vouching for her. And that gave her a lot of credibility. And that also helped her get a lot of media attention.

archived recording

Elizabeth Holmes is here. She is the founder and C.E.O. of Theranos. It is a blood analytics company that has developed an innovative approach to blood testing.

erin griffith

She appeared on the cover of Fortune, on the cover of Forbes.

archived recording

Forbes recently named Elizabeth Holmes the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.

erin griffith

They called her the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.

michael barbaro

Hm.

archived recording 1

Oh my God.

archived recording 2

Elizabeth Holmes.

erin griffith

And she was really held up as this role model for women in tech.

archived recording 1

31 years old, and she’s worth $4.5 billion.

archived recording 2

$4.5 billion.

michael barbaro

And at this point, as everything is going so well and she’s raising all this money, and she herself is worth all this money, is this just a good idea, Theranos? Or is this a technological reality?

erin griffith

I mean, yes and no. On the surface, it looks very real. They have a lab that’s doing a lot of testing. They have a lot of funding. And they start doing their tests on real people. They have a partnership with Walgreens, and they start putting these machines into pharmacies in Arizona. They have a lot of patients, and they’ve hired some very credible scientists. And they have a $9 billion valuation. There’s a lot of promise here.

michael barbaro

But it’s still mostly promise.

erin griffith

Right, but that is sort of the currency of Silicon Valley. I mean, companies are able to raise money and get off the ground based on what is going to happen in the future. So they had a prototype, they had technology that they were developing and improving, and that’s sort of what got them to this point.

michael barbaro

So in the fake it till you make it world of Silicon Valley, she’s still kind of faking it, but in some sense, she’s also really making it, and people are believing it.

erin griffith

I mean, what we didn’t know at the time, because investors didn’t really dig in and the media sort of believed her — based on the credibility she had created — was that Theranos was faking it a lot.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

archived recording

Lately, one of the most exciting privately held companies in Silicon Valley has come under fire. I’m talking about Theranos.

erin griffith

In 2015, the Wall Street Journal publishes this story.

archived recording

Now the company is on its heels after the Wall Street Journal reported today its tests are unreliable.

erin griffith

With sort of an understated headline. It said, “Hot Startup Theranos Has Struggled With Its Blood-Test Technology.” It was written by John Carreyrou.

archived recording

And just this morning, the Wall Street Journal ran a pretty scathing article about the company, alleging that the company’s proprietary testing devices may be inaccurate, and basically accusing Theranos of deceptive practices.

erin griffith

And the revelations in it were kind of earth-shattering for the company’s narrative.

archived recording

This article raising questions about how accurate this technology is, whether Theranos falsified proficiency tests.

erin griffith

I mean, the story said that Theranos was not using its own proprietary technology, it was not using its mini lab machines for the majority of its tests, because it wasn’t able to perform those tests. It was only performing a dozen or so tests. And those that it was performing were not working very well. They were giving unreliable results or inaccurate ones, and that the company had been struggling to deliver on all of the things that it said it was already doing.

michael barbaro

So the core of this vision — this technology that would make it possible to test with a pinprick, not a needle — that’s not really functioning.

erin griffith

Exactly. People go into Walgreens in Arizona, and more likely than not, they’re going to get their blood drawn the normal way, and they’re going to get their test results done through the same labs that Theranos claimed that it was disrupting.

michael barbaro

Huh.

erin griffith

And so immediately, Theranos denied this, but it sort of began to spiral as more and more people started looking into all of the claims that they had made.

archived recording

New troubles for the blood testing start-up Theranos. The company tells Bloomberg it voluntarily —

erin griffith

I mean, immediately, reporters that had written positive stories about the company start digging in.

archived recording

More problems for Palo Alto-based Theranos.

erin griffith

Government agencies are set on high alert and start their own investigations.

archived recording

— says F.D.A. agents recently showed up unannounced at Theranos amid concerns over the company’s testing methods.

erin griffith

And they find some major problems there.

archived recording

Theranos facing new trouble this morning, as they shut down multiple labs.

erin griffith

The S.E.C. starts an investigation.

archived recording

Elizabeth Holmes will have to pay $500,000 in fines. She will no longer be able to serve as an officer or director of any public company for the next decade.

erin griffith

Investors start suing Theranos over claims that they had made.

archived recording 1

Partner Fund Management says Theranos repeatedly lied. That’s a direct quote.

archived recording 2

The suit’s being brought by Robert Coleman. He’s a Silicon Valley dealmaker who invested in the company back in 2013.

archived recording 3

More trouble for Theranos, the embattled blood testing company now offering shares to investors who promise not to sue them.

erin griffith

And all of this reveals major, major problems within Theranos. We learn that Elizabeth Holmes had been claiming that Theranos machines were being used in Afghanistan on the battlefield, and that was simply not true.

michael barbaro

Hm.

erin griffith

We learned that some of the revenue claims that she had made to investors — at one point, she said the company would make $1 billion in 2015, and that real number was maybe closer to $100,000.

michael barbaro

Wow. That’s a big difference.

erin griffith

There were — yeah, there were a lot of issues. And of course, Theranos had to void two years of their test results.

michael barbaro

Wow.

erin griffith

And that includes a lot of patients who got inaccurate results. I mean, there was a man who tested positive for H.I.V. when he didn’t have it. There are people that got very critical results and had to make important medical decisions based on them. And they’re now learning that those results might not have been accurate.

michael barbaro

Wow.

erin griffith

So naturally, there’s a lot of lawsuits that follow in a situation like that.

[music]

So by 2018, Theranos is about to run out of money. Elizabeth Holmes’s reputation is disgraced, and her career is essentially over. The coverage of her has turned completely negative. There’s a best-selling book about the downfall, and there are documentaries being made. It’s kind of almost become a meme. You know, people are dressing up as her for Halloween, and not in a flattering way. And a lot of the women in tech who were cheering her on are really let down. And that seemed like it would be the end of the story. And in any normal case, it probably would be. But then the U.S. government issued these indictments, 12 counts of fraud.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

[music]

archived recording

Silicon Valley in the national spotlight tonight, as the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes began in San Jose in a federal courtroom.

[music]

archived recording 1

Tonight, Elizabeth Holmes facing the test of her life. Holmes has been charged with multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

archived recording 2

She’s facing up to 20 years in prison if she’s found guilty of the 12 charges against her.

michael barbaro

OK, so let’s turn to this trial. As you said at the start of our conversation, the question that would seem to be at the center of it is whether what Elizabeth Holmes did is overzealous salesmanship, Silicon Valley on steroids, or just plain old fraud. So how are both the prosecution and the defense approaching this? And let’s start with the defense because it would seem like it has the hardest job here, given everything you’ve already told us.

erin griffith

That’s right. The defense kind of opened up by throwing almost everything they could at the wall. It seems like they are letting themselves have the option to take any number of arguments down the road. This is a long trial. It’s going to last three months.

michael barbaro

Wow.

erin griffith

But the biggest theme that they were really hammering is that Elizabeth Holmes is an entrepreneur who is passionate, and she tried hard, she did her best. She came up short, but failure is not a crime.

michael barbaro

Hm.

erin griffith

And they really, really worked to humanize her and try to make this seem like a sympathetic human story.

michael barbaro

Huh.

erin griffith

They tried to just kind of say, listen, she made some mistakes. She relied on other people to tell her what was going on in the labs, and she truly believed that this would work, and that Theranos technology was on the path to really changing the world. And that’s kind of what they’re trying to do, is just get one or two jurors to be sympathetic to her and relate to that coming up short on your big goals.

michael barbaro

So that really is the Silicon Valley ethos version of a defense, right? That she was a visionary, the vision didn’t pan out, but that’s not illegal. Do you think that that will be convincing to members of a jury?

erin griffith

I mean, what’s interesting about it is we are here in Silicon Valley right now, and the jury is aware of the tech industry. It looms large over everything around here. They’re aware of tech culture. And so I think they’ll be at least aware of this kind of argument. And depending on their relationship to the tech industry, that could really affect that. Some people might kind of feel resentful toward all the money and power that has been accumulated, and others might work in the tech industry and say, oh, I see a little of myself in that.

michael barbaro

What do you mean, I see a little bit of myself in that?

erin griffith

Well, you know, I’ve worked for a company, and sometimes we were so close to getting that deal, or you know, all of the things that we were trying to scramble and hustle to put together, sometimes it was a total mess on the inside, but we actually pulled it off and it worked. Or, you know, sometimes we came up short, and failure is just sort of a part of the ethos here. I mean, most investors, they expect the majority of start-ups to fail —

michael barbaro

Right.

erin griffith

— because they’re going after huge, sometimes impossible-sounding goals. And if they pull them off, it’s almost like a miracle. But if they fail, it’s almost common.

michael barbaro

Mhm. But presumably, in most, if not all, of those cases, failure does not mean deceiving investors, deceiving patients, saying that one machine is doing something when, in fact, it’s an entirely different machine that you don’t even own.

erin griffith

Yes. I mean, that is the most generous interpretation of their argument that I’m trying to make here, but yes, your point is well taken.

michael barbaro

So this leads us, I think, quite naturally to the prosecution. So how, in the prosecution’s opening statements, have they approached this question of salesmanship versus fraud, failure versus deception?

erin griffith

So the prosecution made the case just very flatly and unemotionally that Elizabeth Holmes lied and misled investors in order to get money. And they had this refrain that they repeated over and over, which was, out of time and money, Elizabeth Holmes decided to lie. And they’re kind of making the case that there were many times over the years when Theranos was almost out of money or about to go out of business, and in order to keep the company going, she built this web of increasingly sophisticated lies.

And they pulled up some pretty damning evidence, including an allegedly falsified report that Theranos had created showing that pharmaceutical companies were endorsing the technology that she then passed on to investors. And in fact, pharmaceutical companies had never endorsed Theranos’s technology. And there were many examples like that that just did not look good.

And they addressed head-on this argument about the culture of Silicon Valley. They said straight up, this is a case about lying and cheating to get money. That’s a crime on Main Street, and that’s a crime in Silicon Valley.

michael barbaro

Hm. Right. In other words, the prosecution is saying there’s no double standard, there’s no Silicon Valley version of fraud that’s acceptable, fraud is fraud. And they say they have the evidence that she personally was involved in the kind of deceptions that would have misled investors and clients.

erin griffith

Yes. But the prosecution has to prove that she intended to defraud investors, and not just that she was sharing lies, but she was aware that this was a fraud that she was perpetrating, which is a little bit trickier.

michael barbaro

Well, how do they intend to show that she intended to lie?

erin griffith

Well, they have a lot of evidence. They have all of her text messages. They have many emails, many internal documents where employees are raising red flags and saying we’re having problems, or these tests aren’t necessarily returning the best results. There are text messages between her and Sunny Balwani, who is the president of Theranos and also her romantic partner, talking about problems in the labs that they needed to solve. And at the same time, there are investor presentations and public statements that she is making that sort of directly contradict some of the internal problems that were clearly happening at the company.

michael barbaro

Got it. So it seems clear that Holmes knew about problems, and the suggestion from the prosecution is that she withheld that information from investors. But Erin, you described these investors as luminaries, smart people with a lot of money. And so I’m curious how this trial will address the question of investor responsibility. What obligation did these big-time investors have to look under the hood of Theranos, to challenge Elizabeth Holmes, to demand to look at the financial books, to understand whether the machines were functioning properly?

erin griffith

That is a big challenge in this trial, is that the investors that backed Elizabeth Holmes, they were private market investors. They’re very sophisticated. They have a lot of money. And you would think that these kinds of people would do their diligence, really dig into the company and know what they’re backing. And it’s going to be really hard to make jurors sympathetic to a billionaire who loses a few million making one bad bet.

And the defense has even talked about this in their opening arguments. They were basically saying investors were dying to get into this company. It was a hot company. They were eager to take a risk, and they were aware of the risk. They had to sign documents saying that they knew that. And that is the nature of Silicon Valley. Some of these companies can fail.

michael barbaro

Right. That’s the other side of fake it till you make it, which is buyer beware.

erin griffith

Yes, exactly. But the government’s case is that it doesn’t really matter who the investors are or how much they lost, what matters is that she violated securities laws. She misrepresented her company to investors. She, as an officer at a company that is selling securities, lied. And that is a crime, no matter who the victims are. And just to drive their case home, they are bringing in some people who took Theranos tests and got faulty results, just to illustrate the point that there are real-world victims to the alleged fraud that Elizabeth Holmes perpetrated.

michael barbaro

Mhm. So you mentioned that this trial has just started. It could take months of back-and-forth from the prosecution and the defense, so a lot could happen. But let’s start to imagine that the verdict is at hand, and what it will mean either way. What do you think it will mean if Elizabeth Holmes is found guilty here?

erin griffith

I think it could have a little bit of a ripple effect on the tech industry, which has really been freewheeling for the last decade, and everything has just been going up. And it’s generated a lot of wealth and a lot of interest from new investors, who are wanting to take on a little bit more risk. And I think founders and people across the business world, but particularly start-up founders, are going to look more carefully at some of the claims that they’re making, because this would show that they could go to jail for misrepresenting their company.

And that would be a real change from what we’ve seen in the past. I mean, we’ve had a lot of very famous, well-publicized crash and burns and start-up downfalls. Some of them, you know, veered closer to fraud, some of them were just collapsed in bad behavior or flamed out because they were terrible ideas. But almost none of those executives behind those companies have gone to jail, or even had charges brought against them. So this would mark a real change.

michael barbaro

Right. In most of those cases, they lost their money, maybe they lost their reputation, but they didn’t do time. This would change that dynamic.

erin griffith

Yes.

michael barbaro

And on the flip side, what would it mean if Elizabeth Holmes prevails here and she’s found not guilty?

erin griffith

I mean, at the end of the day, Silicon Valley is a place that tries to build things that people use, and the hope is that they make the world better. And with Theranos, they were trying to do that, and it ended up having consequences for people’s health. And so I think Elizabeth Holmes, she lost her company, she lost her reputation. The company hasn’t been around for years now, but this is the kind of final chapter, the final note on this very long saga. And I think if she is let off, there’s just this kind of cynical understanding that, yes, Silicon Valley gets to play by different rules.

And that could be a problem because this is a place that needs trust in order to function. I mean, we have to trust these tech companies to sort of build the future that they are envisioning and promising to us. And so if Theranos is let off, I think that just sort of creates this impression that everyone here plays by different rules, and they can get away with things. And it really erodes that trust that the industry needs in order to actually build really great things.

[music]

michael barbaro

Well, Erin, thank you very much.

erin griffith

Thank you.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. The full results of the recall election in California show that Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom easily defeated an attempt to remove him from power. Nearly 64 percent of voters rejected the recall effort.

archived recording (governor gavin newsom)

No is not the only thing that was expressed tonight. I want to focus on what we said yes to as a state.

michael barbaro

Exit polls and interviews show that the pandemic was the number one issue for voters, who endorsed Newsom’s aggressive policies, demanding vaccines and masks for Californians.

archived recording (governor gavin newsom)

We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic.

michael barbaro

And.

archived recording (prime minister scott morrison)

Well, good morning from Australia. I’m very pleased to join two great friends of freedom and of Australia, Prime Minister Johnson and President Biden.

michael barbaro

On Wednesday, the United States and Britain took a major step toward countering China’s military influence in the Pacific, announcing that both countries will help Australia to deploy nuclear-powered submarines that will patrol the region.

archived recording (prime minister scott morrison)

To help deliver the security and stability our region needs, we must now take our partnership to a new level.

michael barbaro

The submarines are designed to alter the balance of power in the South China Sea, a major waterway over which China has claimed exclusive authority, despite objections from neighboring countries.

Today’s episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson and Clare Toeniskoetter, with help from Neena Pathak and Diana Nguyen. It was edited by Paige Cowett, contains original music by Marion Lozano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for The Daily. I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Michael Simon Johnson and

Neena Pathak and


When Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, the blood testing start-up, she was held up as one of the next great tech innovators. She cultivated her public image with a deep voice, an intense stare and a uniform of black turtlenecks meant to evoke Steve Jobs.

But her company collapsed, and she was accused of lying about how well Theranos’s technology worked. Now she is on trial on fraud charges.

The case against Ms. Holmes is being held up as a referendum on the swashbuckling “fake it till you make it” culture of Silicon Valley, which encourages start-up founders like her to exaggerate and craft a grand vision of the future that may or may not be true.

The case turns on whether she lied and misled investors. But it’s also about so much more.


Erin Griffith, a reporter covering technology start-ups and venture capital for The New York Times.

Image
Elizabeth Holmes in 2015. She is charged with 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud over false claims she made about Theranos’s blood tests and business.Credit...Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters

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Erin Griffith contributed reporting.

The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Annie Brown, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Austin Mitchell, Neena Pathak, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Daniel Guillemette, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Soraya Shockley, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop and Chelsea Daniel.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Theo Balcomb, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Erica Futterman, Wendy Dorr and Elizabeth Davis-Moorer.

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