SAN JOSE — For Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, the stakes could hardly be higher: a new mother at 37, in a relationship with an MIT-educated hotel heir, she could find herself locked away for years in a prison cell if the jury in her trial decides she committed criminal fraud.
Holmes, whose spectacular startup crash has led to one of the most closely-watched trials in Silicon Valley history, is accused of swindling investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and defrauding patients with false claims that her defunct Palo Alto company’s purportedly revolutionary blood-testing machines could conduct a full range of tests using a few drops of blood from a finger stick.
To convict Holmes, federal prosecutors must go beyond the well-documented deficiencies of Theranos’ technology and persuade the jury that Holmes deliberately schemed to take money from investors and patients when she knew the technology did not work.
“The question for this jury is, ‘Did Elizabeth Holmes go too far?'” said legal analyst and former Santa Clara County prosecutor Steven Clark. But with both sides having made strong cases — and the possibility that additional testimony and evidence could emerge before the trial ends — Clark said, “I can’t answer that at this point.”
With a parade of 29 former Theranos employees, investors and patients, prosecutors have sought to portray Holmes as a greedy CEO who was in full control of her company, spinning a web of lies about the...
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