So will Holmes go to prison? A green card holder in Texas was just​ sentenced to eight years in prison for voting in a US election. Surely Holmes will go away much longer right?
The Theranos thing might be more difficult to prove as it's possible the technology was somewhat legitimate but clearly if sharing the fake test data was a critical part of them investing, then it might be much the same.
The early investors who bought into just the idea may not have any claim. But any later investors who invested based solely on claims made with falsified test data may have a claim against the company/her.
> A green card holder in Texas was just​ sentenced to eight years in prison for voting in a US election. Surely Holmes will go away much longer right?
That certainly sounds like a miscarriage of justice, but not really a sensible point of comparison. It's an entirely different domain of law. And even if it were apples to apples, a random green card holder vs an American tech billionaire will get vastly different treatments and outcomes in the American justice system (which is bad, but simply he reality).
> So will Holmes go to prison?
I would bet heavily against it. Holmes maintained panoptic control over all of Theranos's operations (until she was barred from operating labs, presumably), so it seems very unlikely that definitive evidence of fraud will surface from within.
Also, I imagine that the US regulatory bodies that started actions against Theranos in the past two years are or will soon be... significantly less disposed to vigorously pursuing criminal charges, especially of the kind that would assign personal culpability to corporate management.
I'm extremely skeptical that this could in any way be possible, but is it remotely possible that she herself did not know the extent of the fraudulence of the tests?
This guy got 6.5yrs in prison for defrauding investors by making it appear the company had value it actually didn't: https://www.law360.com/articles/892055/broker-gets-6-5-years...
It's difficult to find other examples as most investor fraud is based on directly milking investors with obviously false claims.
For example, this SF startup founder lied about being close to acquisition and never handed over shares in the company in return for money: http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/02/20/san-francisco-startup-... that's more directly fraudulent.
The Theranos thing might be more difficult to prove as it's possible the technology was somewhat legitimate but clearly if sharing the fake test data was a critical part of them investing, then it might be much the same.
The early investors who bought into just the idea may not have any claim. But any later investors who invested based solely on claims made with falsified test data may have a claim against the company/her.