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Back when the Theranos documentary came out on HBO, Kaiser and I talked on the podcast about scamming CEO Elizabeth Holmes’s voice and appearance. (We’re taking today off from the podcast due to some technical issues and my laziness.) We found it a bit sexist to focus on those things about her, particularly when poorly groomed men are praised and considered eccentric geniuses. The thing is, it’s so hard not to notice her hair because it’s so flyaway. I wouldn’t be caught out of the house like that barring an emergency or wind storm and I’m a lowly writer. As The Cut points out, Holmes has been switching up her trademark black turtleneck for her court appearances and she also switched her flyaway fried hair from bleached blonde to bad highlights and barrel curls. She will go on trial starting next summer and is facing 20 years in jail.
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, will officially go to trial in San Jose next year, according to the US District Judge Edward J. Davila of the Northern District of California.
Federal prosecutors indicted Holmes and the company’s former president and COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani last summer, charging the pair with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. The pair face 20 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
According to TechCrunch, the trial will begin in August 2020, with jury selection beginning on July 28th, 2020. The Wall Street Journal also reports that prosecutors have collected millions of pages of documents, and that the defense has complained about the amount that is being presented, and that the WSJ’s initial reporting might have unduly influenced the way the government regulators approached the company.
While I hope she gets maximum jail time and think it’s well deserved, I wish that justice was equal for the financiers who caused the subprime mortgage crisis or any of the other white collar criminals who typically get off despite swindling millions. I wonder how this is affecting her relationship with her fiance. We heard earlier this year that Holmes, 35, is engaged to a 27-year-old hotel chain heir named Billy Evans. (Update: They got secretly married! Guess he can’t testify against her now. Thanks Ader!)
Also, take a brush through your hair after you curl it for the love of God. Maybe she’ll get some hair and makeup tips in prison.
Correction: Elizabeth Holmes got secret married, and homeboy’s parents are (allegedly) none too thrilled!
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/06/inside-elizabeth-holmess-secret-wedding-podcast
OOh I will fix this thanks!
If you get a chance, the Vanity Fair podcast is worth a listen. It’s sprinkled with some ceremony tidbits and scandal-worthy conspiracy theories.
Why she not in prison yet?
Why they need to wait another year to start this trial?
Why I do have the weird feeling that it would not end with life in prison?
because the justice system moves as slow as molasses. Calendaring is a big reason for that. one side puts a motion forth and the other side has x amount of days to respond. therefore things that seem like they should be done in 3 months, take a year or more.
That’s just civil. Criminal moves much faster.
Because you’re not very well informed on how the justice system works.
The federal system is much slower to bring people to trial than the local or state level. It is even slower now because of the shortage of federal prosecutors due, in part, to the glacial pace of the current administration in filling positions.
“Unfairly influenced how regulators approach the company” is a hilariously obnoxious statement. THEY LIED ABOUT THEIR TECHNOLOGY. THEY LIED ABOUT PEOPLE’S HEALTH OUTCOMES. THEY LIED ABOUT EVERYTHING. And they would’ve gotten away with it even longer, affecting God knows how many people, had somebody not intervened with research. Unbelievable. Throw her in jail and don’t give her parole.
Right. It broke my heart hearing from the woman whose faulty test said her cancer had come back when in fact it had not. What an awful traumatic thing to go through. But in the end, a better outcome than those that may have had life threatening conditions and didn’t know because of her stupid fake xerox blood test reader. I can’t remember the documentary enough to point out if anyone did die, but how horrific if even that potential existed. Sure there are white-collar criminals that haven’t been served justice but this woman and that other awful dude Sunny literally played with innocent people’s lives. Jail time, byebye.
Someone from her team committed suicide in the early days of the company. I think he was the one possibly designing all the “magic box” work and she took all the credit for it.
Ian Gibbons was the biochemist who came up with a lot of the theranos patent. EH put her name on the patents as well even though she didn’t work on them. EH and Richard Fuisz were in a patent dispute and Fuisz wanted to dispose Gibbons because he noticed that the patents were similar to the ones gibbons filed at his old job. He was already depressed when he was deposed. He knew EH was lying to people about the theranos tech working. If he told the truth, he would have been fired. If he lied, he knew patients would be misdiagnosed. Already depressed, he overdosed on acetaminophen.
She seems completely remorseless. I hope she gets many years behind bars to contemplate her actions.
Sociopaths can’t see the difference between right and wrong. I don’t know if she’ll ever contemplate her actions.
Sociopaths and psychopaths certainly see and know the difference between right and wrong (if they didn’t, they wouldn’t try to hide certain things ), the thing is they do not care. They have no empathy and only see their own gratification.
She’s a total psycho.
I watched the HBO documentary over the weekend. It was just stunning how many rich and powerful people bought into her schtick.
This! Rich white people especially elderly men were snagged hook line and sinker by her epic line of bull. Ugh.
My thinning hair is very flyaway and I am not a crook. Any tips, products, sprays that don’t have parabens or fragrance?
whoarethesepeople, you could try a pea-sized amount of apricot oil. rub into your palms and run or scrunch through your hair. focus on the ends and avoid the roots.
Thanks!
What was she doing with her eyes before? She looks like a totally different person.
And no, she has no remorse whatsoever.
I bet she is remorseful about being caught
I think it’s possibly just a different eyeliner technique, but I also believe opening her eyes extra huge and wide was part of her “thing”, like the turtlenecks were and the deep voice was. She was very wrapped up in the type of image she wanted to present, and now I think she’s finally realized how up a creek she is and is slowly dropping the façade.
Maybe she has thyroid issue. Don’t know, but curls don’t soften crazy eyes.
Maybe she is on meds. Her eyes look less crazy now.
Yes, send her to prison and I love that the barrel curls are the headline here. At the same time, I’ve said from the start – we’re going to learn all the wrong lessons from this. First of all, she certainly did NONE of this alone; there were plenty of (male) people who encouraged and supported this operation. One of them is even indicted, but no one talks about that. All the money guys got excited because having a company fronted by the young blonde woman was such awesome PR! She could get on any news show, any interview! The voice! The turtlenecks! The finance machine ate her up. They put her everywhere. Was there a point where she could have confessed that the science was junk, that it wasn’t going to work? Did she have the power to? Even if those answers are a resounding yes, I think the better lesson here is that we hold someone up to be the second coming and then are shocked when they disappoint.
@ TQB-LOVE, LOVE YOUR COMMENT!!
I don’t feel right about commenting about someone’s appearance, BUT…her hair is definitely something that she can do something, ANYTHING, about; she has the resources! I think her awful hair is part of her “well-crafted” image; she’s WAY too busy, WAY too brilliant, WAY too “cutting edge” to care how her hair looks.
I’m 59++ and my hair is strictly wash and wear; no product, no blow drying, nothing. My just-washed, uncombed hair looks amazing compared to those god-awful sausage curls.
WHO DOESNT PULL A COMB THROUGH HAIR LIKE THAT BEFORE LEAVING THE HOUSE, ESPECIALLY TO SUCH A PUBLIC EVENT WHEN YOU***KNOW***THERE WILL BE CAMERAS?!?
Happy Monday, my fellow CBs 🤪
“Was there a point where she could have confessed that the science was junk, that it wasn’t going to work? Did she have the power to?”
— Are you kidding? She outright lied again and again, hundreds and probably thousands of times to investors, partners like Walgreens, and journalists. She doesn’t get to hide behind the excuse of being a woman and being a victim of men.” You should read Carreyrou’s original article. She pretended the secrecy was all about protecting IP and trade secrets when the shoddy technology was playing fire with people’s health.
She got away with it for so long because people were so desperate to believe in this type of pharma unicorn that they threw money at her, didn’t do any due diligence before signing big deals like the Walgreens one, and got paid to affirm Theranos’ cred (people like Kissinger sitting on the board even though he has zero science knowledge).
“Was there a point where she could have confessed that the science was junk, that it wasn’t going to work? Did she have the power to?”
— Are you kidding? She outright lied again and again, hundreds and probably thousands of times to investors, partners like Walgreens, and journalists. She doesn’t get to hide behind the excuse of being a woman and being a victim of men.” You should read Carreyrou’s original article. She pretended the secrecy was all about protecting IP and trade secrets when the shoddy technology was playing fire with people’s health.
She got away with it for so long because people were so desperate to believe in this type of pharma unicorn that they threw money at her, didn’t do any due diligence before signing big deals like the Walgreens one, and got paid to affirm Theranos’ cred (people like Kissinger sitting on the board even though he has zero science knowledge).
I love messy unkempt hair lol. Severely styled do’s give me tics. That being said, this woman is beyond simple hair discussions lol. She’s evil. She’s a psychopathic sociopath. Twenty years isn’t enough. Life with no parole please.
She reminds me a bit of Rachel Dolezal in that she completely believes her own delusion. Dolezal was fairly innocuous, imo, compared to the scam this woman pulled for so long.
I’d read that her now husband’s family was horrified and distraught that he was with her. I wonder what his motive is? True love may be possible but it doesn’t seem likely.
He is as bad as she is. He didn’t hold her accountable and allowed her delusion to flourish. I truly think she feels she’s like a Demi god or something and just through positive thinking was ultimately going to achieve her goal. No one checked her. It was absolutely insane.
Some people tried to check her but she didn’t listen.
She is ….. truly awful.
And the hair????? I’m not a fashion forward person at all, but her hairstyle changes are giving me whiplash.
Off to jail for her.
I wonder if she is still affecting the weird voice.
If she were to testify, I’m guessing no. She’d want to look innocent and naive, so it would be completely counterproductive. Although I really don’t understand how that deep put on voice even worked for her, it sounds absurd and painful.
That one flap of hair that is oddly tossed across the top of her head has me so confused…
I recently watched the HBO doc, and wow. She was truly going for the Thomas Edison “fake it till you make it”. I would love to see her get 20 years.
When the facts don’t help you, go for image. Pretty, innocent looking young woman is pretty much her defense, at this point. If she testifies, it’ll be all breathy sounding as if she’s just an innocent fallguy being hung out to dry by the behind the scenes money guys.
So much damage done in this case; I hope she hangs.
This woman has never known how to style her hair. When she was CEO of Theranos, she always looked disheveled and unkempt, like she just woke up. This is more of the same, like she put some curlers in but didn’t follow through all the way. Not sure if it’s part of her image or if she really doesn’t care.
I just finished John Carreyrou’s book. It was great. Then watched the HBO and 20/20 docs – the 20/20 one was better imo, but the book was the best. Still need to listen to the podcast.
She purposely went for VCs who didn’t know about health and science and avoided the VCs who did.
I can’t believe someone married her. Felt sorry for him at first, but then came across a pic of him with a stupid MAGA hat, so whatever. I have no empathy for magats. I heard that she’s trying to secure funding for another startup.
This weekend, while reading AOC tweet about how being the president daughter doesn’t automatically qualify you be a diplomat, it reminded me of the guy who thought EH was qualified to invent and run theranos because her great great great grandfather founded a yeast company and her great uncle has a hospital named after him so “she came by talents naturally.” Sure, cause business acumen and medical knowledge are passed down genetically.
I wonder how much longer they would have if John carreyrou didn’t write that article about them in the wsj. And as much I hate Murdoch, I’m thankful he stood by the journal instead of killing it like EH has wanted.
John Carreyrou is awesome I agree and that book is so good. Holmes and her cronies/lawyer attack dogs did so much to try to threaten and silence journalists and others who tried to expose what was going on, down to clinic nurses who were seeing bizarre results from these tests. It is extremely sinister.
Speaking of sinister, she is too, a strange hybrid of sinister and bizarre. For years she got to wear the mantle as the greatest woman scientist/entrepreneur, she got so much glowing media attention, and it was all a fraud.
John Carreyrou deserves a million awards for breaking the story, for sticking to his guns, and for not letting Theranos intimidate him. I binged Theranos as in I read Carreyrou’s book, watched the HBO documentary/20-20 special and the podcast. The book was the best out of all of those mediums as it really got into the nitty gritty details of what isn’t covered in the surface articles and all the effort spent into researching and writing.
EH was definitely very calculating about which relationships she cultivated and who she reached out to. She learned early on science people would turn her down (like her professor at Stanford who kept telling her what she wanted to do wasn’t scientifically possible) so she reached out to people with deep pockets who had no science background and who wouldn’t refuse her. Any employee who understood the mechanics of how the Edison was not working and who spoke up was fired. She deserves the maximum sentence.
i did the same thing. the minute i finished the book, i watched the hbo doc and then the 20/20 one. haven’t listen to the podcast yet though.
I can’t imagine how much blind faith is required to marry someone that absolutely deserves and probably will receive some jail time for the crap she pulled.
If she testifies which voice will she use?
so she cant be bothered to cosplay as female SJ anymore? I wonder if she starts using a different voice too~ erm….
i love those sausage curls. i wonder what size curling iron she used.
I AM SO LAME!!!
with the sausage curls and lighter colors i kinda wonder if she’s now going for more of a “Little Bo Peep” vibe.