Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was convicted today on four of 11 charges related to her company’s failed blood-testing technology.
A San Jose jury deliberated for nearly 50 hours over seven days before finding the disgraced former CEO guilty on three counts of fraud and one of conspiracy. Holmes was acquitted on four other charges, and jurors were unable to reach a verdict on three other fraud counts.
Holmes, 37, who had pleaded not guilty to all 11 charges and testified in court, faces a maximum prison term of 80 years — two decades on each conviction — but is likely to serve them concurrently. No sentencing date was set but is expected at a hearing next week.
Holmes quit Stanford University at 19 and went on to found the now-shuttered Theranos, claiming that its unprecedented technology could diagnose numerous diseases including cancer from just a few drops of human blood. By 2015, Silicon Valley had made the young CEO a short-lived billionaire as venture capitalists swarmed. But an exposé in the Wall Street Journal that year began her rapid downfall.
She was indicted in 2018, and her trial began August 31.
Holmes is the subject of Bad Blood, an upcoming Apple movie starring Jennifer Lawrence as the CEO and written by Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short). The project originally was set up at Legendary in 2016, not long after the WSJ report was published.
She also was the subject of The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, a 2019 documentary by Oscar winner Alex Gibney. “People have a fascination with frauds,” the filmmaker told Deadline in an interview then.