Henry Kissinger (former United States Secretary of State);
Jim Mattis (retired Marine Corps four-star general);
George Shultz (former United States Secretary of State);
Richard Kovacevich (former CEO of Wells Fargo);
William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense);
William Foege (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
She is like a little FTX in that sense.
But I don't believe the Clintons' are uniquely corrupt, rather just as corrupt as similarly powerful US politicians. I am not a believer if QAnon conspiracies.
"""One of her earliest investors, Timothy Draper, was an old neighbor from childhood. Another, Don Lucas, was the friend of her father's college classmate. (Lucas brought on Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison, according to The Times.)
Holmes' father's family "moved in powerful circles," and he himself is a longtime public servant who held "a number of senior government positions in Washington," Abelson and Creswell report. Her mother was a congressional aide.
But despite those Washington connections, The Times report suggests that Theranos' powerful board — which includes two former senators and two former Secretaries of State — is at least in large part a credit to Holmes' power of persuasion.
According to the Times, she met George P. Schultz, Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State and one of the company's first high-powered board members, at a conference."""
I am actually a lot more interested in the question of the board and investors. If Ms. Holmes is indeed a not-so-smart sociopath/psychopath/... why was half the top level of the US government so prepared to hand her a big check?
A partial list people she convinced: George Schulz (former Secretary of State) and "via him" ...
* Richard Kovacevich, former Wells Fargo & Co. CEO
* Jim Mattis, former head of U.S. Central Command who later became Defense Secretary
* Gary Roughead, U.S. Navy officer
* Sam Nunn, former U.S. Senator
* Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State
* William Perry, former Defense Secretary
* Richard Kovacevich (former CEO of Wells Fargo);
* William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense); and
* William Foege (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
* Besty DeVos (former education secretary)
These are all people who decide on who gets to occupy really important positions in the US government. This is not a full list (but I'm mostly leaving out Trump cabinet members ... shall we say for obvious reasons. That Betsy DeVos cannot correctly judge biomedical test performance, fine. That William Foege can't see medical fraud for what it is, not OK. That Secretaries of State cannot tell they're being lied to for 5 years ... I mean the positions these people occupy and oversee are going to be magnets for sociopaths/psychopaths ... and they can't tell?
If it matters how rich the investors she defrauded actually are, perhaps she should get just a few months in jail:
"Notably, Theranos’ investors weren’t the usual-suspect venture capital firms. Rather, her funding came from individuals like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Walton family, among other wealthy elites. Some evidence showed that these investors were willing to give Theranos money even when Holmes evaded their more probing questions."
He joined in 2013.. this story broke in oct 2015 in the wsj. And he resigned in December (along with other boards he was on) to join the trump admin.
So there's an open question about when he knew about this fraud. But clearly he didn't have a problem staying on even after it became public knowledge.
And there's also this:
In 2012, for instance, Holmes began talking to the Department of Defense about using Theranos’s technology on the battlefield in Afghanistan. But specialists at the D.O.D. soon uncovered that the technology wasn’t entirely accurate, and that it had not been vetted by the Food and Drug Administration. When the department notified the F.D.A. that something was amiss, according to The Washington Post, Holmes contacted Marine general James Mattis, who had initiated the pilot program. He immediately e-mailed his colleagues about moving the project forward. Mattis was later added to the company board when he retired from the service. (Mattis says he never tried to interfere with the F.D.A. but rather was “interested in rapidly having the company’s technologies tested legally and ethically.”)
IANAL, but federal criminal procedure requires more than just a smell of fraud to convict someone in a federal court. A Federal prosecutor either needs a political bone to pick or a pretty easy to convict case to push for charges. Federal prosecutors have limited time and pick things that either grant them political expediency or they believe that they have enough evidence that the person they are going after is going to end up convicted with some certainty.
The problem here is not that Theranos has failed or has misrepresented the product, it's that Holmes personally needs to have been found to directly misrepresent the company in a fraudulent fashion. Her and Theranos can likely be sued (as civil cases require "preponderance of evidence") but I highly doubt you can prove fraud beyond a reasonable doubt unless there is a much greater scandal that is unearthed during an investigation. And that's probably not going to happen.
So let's talk about a federal investigation of Theranos, then: this is someone who has had James Mattis, the current prime candidate for Secretary of Defense, for help and sits on the board of Theranos [1]. She is connected to most of the political elite (Kissinger et al, all of the VC/finance world.) If anyone can put down an FBI investigation on her person, it would be someone this well connected to organizations that the FBI themselves lean upon in some way or another. This is Washington, and let's be real, favors are favors. Helping one of these guys somewhere in some way buys you favors, and you may be able to trade to get the investigation off of your back.
Furthermore, what stands to be gained by all of those on this board in power by prosecuting Holmes? It would tarnish the reputation of potential cabinet members and all others in Washington that "believed in" Holmes and her ideas. The political PR nightmare for these guys isn't worth the trouble of being involved in this. It becomes scandal for them. They would best see the company fade into irrelevance, and begin setting up the message that this is just another failed entrepreneurial case, of people making a moonshot and missing it. Tell Holmes it's OK, give her a powerful position in some healthcare think tank, and be on your way.
Also, what message does it stand to give the American public that have been sold on this visionary? The PR storm told people here is a white, female college dropout who hit the Forbes list and achieved the American dream. Do you really want to start a news cycle where Holmes is now being thrown in prison? Do you want that message, especially when so much of Washington is connected to it? That's emotionally heartbreaking to many.
So there's no bone to pick, if anything negative political blowback, an uncertain ability to prove Holmes herself defrauded people, and enough political power to tell the FBI to look at someone else. This is why I say there's little to no hope of her going to prison for this. Holmes knows what she is doing on that front, even if her visions didn't fully materialize. She has played the PR game pretty well up until this point, shoved her chips all in on the moonshot, and failed to deliver the goods. Frankly, I think she has thought all this through and her bets are on what I've said above. The question is whether or not this line of thinking is incorrect. I am armchairing it, and her life is on the line.
And the previous administration never prosecuted any financial crimes, especially not Elizabth Holmes, right?
"In June 2018, Theranos announced that Holmes was stepping down as CEO. On the same day, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had charged Holmes, along with Balwani, with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud." [0]
There’s one other REALLY important reason why Holmes was able to raise money. Remember venture firms with blood test knowledge like Google V were turning her down.
Holmes was close family friends with George Schultz, and that allowed her to do two things. First, get a bunch of military and government guys on the board. And second, sell to the military.
That was Theranos’ real ace in the hole. Holmes knew top military brass and they were going to give her military contracts to test soldiers’ blood. We don’t know what she was telling investors, exactly, but that seems like a real source of revenue investors would care about.
Carreyrou describes how it was a mid level DoD employee that screwed up the plan - he looked at the data and scuttled the contract even though the generals wanted to award it to Theranos. Hat tip to hard working, honest govt employees.
Holmes is a bad CEO? She built a 9 billion dollar company using only smoke and mirrors. That just doesn't happen everyday. Imagine how successful Theranos would be if they actually had a product.
Henry Kissinger (former United States Secretary of State);
Jim Mattis (retired Marine Corps four-star general);
George Shultz (former United States Secretary of State);
Richard Kovacevich (former CEO of Wells Fargo);
William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense);
William Foege (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
She is like a little FTX in that sense.
But I don't believe the Clintons' are uniquely corrupt, rather just as corrupt as similarly powerful US politicians. I am not a believer if QAnon conspiracies.
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