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?
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.
Seems like there sure should be.
I am willing to bet she wouldn't be charged jail time for more than six months. She would have enough contacts and money to may be totally avoid it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/02/1...
What an abomination. 8 years in prison. They should really pat themselves on the back.
I bet $1000 if this lady committed the same crime in NJ, she wouldn't have faced any prison time.
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.