For anyone having trouble remembering her like me, this is the woman that ran the scam blood testing company with "super-duper awesome blood testing machines," that actually never worked and they just did standard blood tests at huge markups (read: committed fraud).
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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she also did that goofy fake deep voice for some reason
She read that women with deeper voices get taken more seriously by people around them and can be seen here messing it up.
seen
In the end, that may be what she's remembered most for
Our silly monkey brains interpret deeper voices as being more authoritative.
It's likely she was taking advantage of that human quirk to make her seem, on a subconscious level, like a better businessperson.
The reason is she got taken more seriously with a deeper voice
The goofy thing is that it worked on the boomers.
No, the reason is she did it because she read/heard that it would make others take her more seriously. That's not the same as what you said.
Well, at least she hoped she would be
There is a tv show that I think is based on her in one of the streaming platforms. It features an actress posing the same way and using a low voice.
I forgot what it's called but I downloaded and watched the whole show.
So, people actually believed that an 18 or 19-year-old developed this revolutionary tech likely requiring several fields worth of knowledge to bring to fruition? I'm not familiar with the story beyond this article, but it sounds like those investors made a bad call. Not that that makes her less guilty of fraud, but if she didn't scam them someone else would have.
Investors have money, not brain. I remember an experiment where their compared a fund run by people and another one run by investing totally randomly. The second one won. Investment has never about being good at it, it was always luck that ran the game. We just hear a lot more about those who won big rather the those who ruined themselves.
There are exceptions to this, like Yale, Renaissance, Berkshire, and maybe Citadel. But most, even well-known funds, are run by incompetent people demanding extremely high fees, rendering any advantage they have over index funds essentially null (often even underperforming the market).
They were a mix of tech investors who thought they were so smart they knew everything, and clueless conservatives. People actually in the health industry didn't touch her with a 10 foot pole. I don't have any sympathy for the idiot investors, but she also defrauded patients with her tech.
Scamming rich people is a victimless crime.
In general, yes. But someone committed suicide because of her. They helped her found the company and were a long time employee until they were called as a witness in a court case and as a result got sidetracked in the company while the court case dragged on. At least that is my understanding.
His name was Ian Gibbons.
The only good thing to come out of this is that she scammed Henry Kissinger because, contrary to popular belief, he's a dumb idiot who got scammed by a kid.
You don't understand investing if this is your view.
Investors like these make 100s of these investments, and expect at least 50%-75% of them to fail. If theranos was successful they'd make 100x their money back, and that's the whole point. You only need 1 or 2 of those out of 100 and you're making absolute bank.
Otherwise you think some kid walking in saying they're going to disrupt taxis and take over the ride share industry worldwide would be successful? That some kid who dropped out of Harvard has made some magic social platform that everyone will be using? All of these ideas sound stupid/unrealistic and like bad investments, but if they work they make billionaires.
11 years in prison first though. Wonder what she will do when she gets out.
Right back to a new scam I bet.
Could be difficult. Name is a bit stained.
Easy, just change the name.
And voice.
Introducing: "Elizabeth Apple".
Right you are, Fred
Can't believe they are letting her do it again in 90 years
Only 90 years huh.
Good it wasn't "for life"!
Guess she better get working on a life extension technology that actually works.
Not sure she was interested in going back in the federal healthcare industry anyway...
I dunno, it worked once it could work again...
This is the best summary I could come up with:
At the time, Holmes claimed to have developed proprietary technology that could perform hundreds of medical tests using just a small drop of blood from a finger prick.
The remarkable claim helped her drive the company's valuation to a stunning $9 billion in 2014, and set up lucrative partnerships.
In today's announcement, the health department noted that the statutory minimum on exclusions for convictions like Holmes' is just five years.
But other factors are considered when determining the term, including how long the fraud took place, the length of the prison sentence, and the amount of restitution ordered.
"As technology evolves, so do our efforts to safeguard the health and safety of patients, and HHS-OIG will continue to use its exclusion authority to protect the public from bad actors."
HHS-OIG also excluded former Theranos President Ramesh Balwani from federal health programs for 90 years.
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