As someone who hasn’t followed the details of the case, was her long prison sentence mainly because she defrauded investors rather than knowingly falsifying medical tests?
She was convicted on charges related to defrauding investors and acquitted on charges related to defrauding patients. A juror told the WSJ “the jury concluded that prosecutors didn’t present enough evidence to show that Ms. Holmes knowingly pitched a faulty product to induce patients to pay for tests.“[1] Take that for what you will. I think it was easier to prove the defrauding the investors part. We know Holmes gave investors certain documents. We know those documents were full of lies. The juror described that as a smoking gun, and I don’t think there was any evidence so clear-cut on the patient side.
Not that this is the right forum to re-try her case, but I'm actually shocked she got 11 years and I might even argue that is far more than she deserves if she was acquitted on the patient side. The problem appears that these statutes are based on dollar amounts of the fraud -- $140 million according to https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/elizabeth-holmes-senten.... Yes that's a lot of money but the investors themselves, how many of them were really damaged in any meaningful way? A few billionaires -- DeVos, Murdoch, Walton -- lost many millions, but what is that, 2 or 3% of their net worth? I'm sure there are some less-wealthy people on the investor list as well but I'm guessing nobody got their life savings wiped out. Defrauding the public, as opposed to some very wealthy investors, seems like a lot more serious crime.
