American Justice always works as a shining beacon of righteousness when fighting for downtrodden, violated, abused and defrauded millionaires and billionaires.
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It may have been easier to show that she defrauded investors than that she defrauded patients. She likely was part of a road show to sell stock to investors whereas there likely was an intermediary who performed the tests and it may be that intermediary who is responsible for defrauding the patient. Again, this is just a guess on my part.
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Are you trying to imply that, like actual women who were murdered for being falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, Elizabeth Holmes is an innocent victim and scapegoat?
I don’t think Holmes is an innocent victim or anything, but I do have mixed feelings about this. It reminds me of Martha Stewart going to prison for obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents. Meanwhile, we see powerful men get away with this shit all the time.
So, yes, she’s guilty and I’m glad the case went that way, but also, it just seems like a lot in this country love to see prominent women “taken down a notch” while men get away with the same or worse behavior constantly.
Verdict is good news, but brings up a lot of frustration.
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All very true, but her conviction is a good precedent nonetheless, and her bf Sunny B. will be next so it won’t just be the womenfolk who get punished. I also think the difference in levels of evil and corruption between them and Martha Steward is pretty big… Martha was just plain greedy, and her crime was essentially victimless. These people were lying about medical technology, to me the lack of ethics there is much worse and deserving of more scorn.
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Here’s hoping!
Totally, that was just the first high profile case that came to mind.
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Less that, more the state not doing more than a fig-leaf attempt to prosecute those charges.
Depending on how cynical you are, that could indicate that those charges existed primarily to influence the jury into not liking Holmes so they’d convict on the charges the state felt it could prove/had harsher penalties, or to pretend that anyone cared about the commoners and not just stealing money from rich people.
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I hear of men being imprisoned for securities fraud and the like too. Aren’t there white collar prisons filled with this type of convict? And I’m guessing the majority of those convictions never hit the front page?
I wonder if the big difference here is that the media made Holmes a recognizable person before Theranos collapsed? And maybe part of her popularity was indeed because she is a she and young? Or maybe because she was so young she didn’t have the pedigree and legal insulation that is afforded to the established criminals?
I do think the gender optics is a big part of this story, but I’m ignorant to the financial fraud conviction world to know if she was an outlier.
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Female Zuckerberg only stole from billionaires. So she has that going for her.
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Defrauding RWNJs and hedge funds: guilty
Defrauding patients with bogus medical results: not guilty
Defrauding less rich investors: hung jury.
I’m glad she was found guilty on something, but damn.
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It didn’t hurt that she was young, female and blonde. That said, a lawyer at a major law firm had many of his extraordinary wealthy, well known clients invest in her business (DeVos, Walton, etc.). A former Secretary of State was put on the board of directors. Then, when a Wall Street Journal reporter started investigating David Boies, a famous litigation attorney, started to make trouble for the reporter as he had done for women who accused Weinstein. There was a lot going on to make this a big story.
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What probably helped the defense was that the device testing database was lost / destroyed, and that their website at the time did not literally claim they only used finger-stick and their own proprietary devices for tests.
Did she knowingly INTEND to defraud patients? That probably was super hard to prove beyond a benefit of the doubt.
Except for all the fraudulent medical tests she sold to people that believed they were real.
She only got convicted of stealing from billionaires.
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The Theranos thing reminded me of the early days of the software business when Microsoft would announce that they were introducing a new product that would do everything, causing the market for their competitors to dry up. Then 18 or so months later they would finally ship a product that did only half of what they had promised. Apple used a similar strategy.
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Simply because someone steals from the rich doesn’t make them a Robin Hood. Consider another medical CEO, Martin Shkreli…he was convicted for defrauding the rich too, but so far from being chaotic good, he was even worse to the poor.
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“I knew what I said was untrue when I said it, but I INTENDED for it to BECOME true before anybody found out …”
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