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Elizabeth Holmes was convicted yesterday on four of eleven charges.
The Theranos founder was found guilty in a San Jose courtroom on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was found not guilty on four charges, and the jury could not reach a verdict on three others. Authorities say Holmes lied about the effectiveness of Theranos blood tests in order to secure funding from investors. George Demos, a former Securities and Exchange Commission prosecutor and adjunct law professor at the UC Davis School of Law, called the verdict "a significant win for the government and sends a powerful signal to Silicon Valley that fraud cannot masquerade as innovation," according to CNN.
Holmes, now 37, started Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19, dropping out of Stanford to pursue it full-time. After a decade, Theranos was marketed as a company that had invented technology that could accurately and reliably test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood taken from a finger prick. After garnering huge interest and investment numbers, in 2015 a Wall Street Journal investigation found the company had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary blood testing device, and with questionable accuracy. After settling massive fraud charges, Theranos dissolved in 2016, and Holmes was indicted in 2018.
Her sentencing date has yet to be announced.