Once “The golden girl of Silicon Valley,” Elizabeth Holmes walked into court with a new image on Aug. 31, 2021, to face the jury on allegations of defrauding investors and patients. Holmes is the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Theranos, a former technology company that supposedly devised blood tests requiring small amounts, but recent discoveries show that Theranos is a lie that Holmes built. 

“She was not just the CEO, she was a very powerful CEO in the Silicon Valley model,” Margaret O’Mara, a historian and professor at the University of Washington, said. 

Since the beginning of Holmes’s trial, she has been found guilty of fraud and conspiracy. The jurors in her trial evaluated the case for seven days, spanning over fifty hours.  

“The fact that a person would go to such lengths to get money is just outrageous, but then I guess it is just human nature. The jury has done a respectable job going over her case,” Ashley West, sophomore, said. 

Holmes faces accusations of tricking her patients into believing that her company had developed a blood-testing device that would reshape their health. In addition, she is accused of lying to multiple clients about the financial status of Theranos. Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes’s ex-boyfriend who was co-CEO with her, was also accused of conspiring with her to cheat their customers. He faces the same fraud charges as Holmes. 

“It does not matter whether Ms. Holmes had the intent to make the lie true or to avoid being found out. The problem is in making the misrepresentations on the day it’s made. By attaching herself to individuals and organizations, she bolstered Theranos’ own credibility, and by exaggerating those contexts, she caused others to believe that Theranos must have the legitimacy of those other entities,” John Bostic, prosecutor for San Fransico Bay area, said. 

During the trial, Holmes accused Balwani of emotional and sexual abuse at the time of the alleged crime, declaring that this caused her poor mental state. Balwani has denied all allegations in response and calls the claims “outrageous.” 

“I’m not the one to judge because I don’t know much about these people, but her crime is not excusable by claims of sexual abuse. If she truly is wrong, I hope others will learn from her,” Okikiade Aiyeola, freshman, said. 

Holmes was initially summoned on June 14, 2018, with similar allegations and her federal trial was scheduled for July 28, 2020, but was pushed back due to her pregnancy. The grand jury was going to charge Holmes with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud—financial blackmail involving the use of telecommunication (transmission of information by several types of technologies over the radio or other electromagnetic systems)—and ten actual counts of wire fraud. One of the conspiracy counts claimed that Holmes defrauded investors, while the second asserted that she defrauded patients who used Theranos services. 

“She had a meticulously well-crafted persona. She went to great lengths to be perceived as a powerful, in-control person. We saw a softer side of her, and I do not think that’s calculated,” Caroline Polisi, a white-collar criminal defense attorney in New York, said. 

Although she has denied the jury’s verdict, Holmes is said to likely face over 20 years in prison with almost three million dollars in fines. She currently lives on a 74-acre estate in Woodside, California—a wealthy Silicon Valley town—with her partner, Billy Evans, and their son. Until her sentence in Sept. 26, 2022, Holmes will remain free on a $500,000 bond.