[PeterisP]

Holmes was not following the same playbook, there's a big difference. What you say holds true for the early investors who may have been sold the future expectations, however, long after that Holmes recruited investors by stating that they have a "working Mars rocket" that's being used right now, when in fact it was smoke&mirrors using altered Siemens machines instead of the claimed Theranos technology.

The difference between saying "we expect to have X working within a year" and "we have had X for a year" is that if X doesn't work out, the second sentence is a crime of fraud. And Holmes was on the wrong end of this difference.

They're not prosecuting for the broken hopes of 2004-2006 investors (who were sold a future that didn't materialize, oh well), they're prosecuting for misleading the investors of, say, 2014 by lying about the achievements of their first 10 years.