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Comment by samstave | Hacker News Reader

Serious question, even if the answer is fairly obvious; What does the future hold for Elizabeth?

I mean, how will a person who has done that and basically become a digital leper, recover or work again in any meaningful way? Change her name, learn a new language and move to another country?

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With her connections, it's hard to imagine she wont be able to find a way to keep venturing into new businesses. It's not like everyone who commits fraud ends up behind bars or something either.

Once she gets out of jail, I have no doubt she'll be able to raise money again, although probably not $billions. There are a lot of suckers out there.

Jail-time, surely? She has deceived investors. She's already not allowed to lead a company for the next 10 years.

> She has deceived investors

Maybe the investors deceived themselves. If I was investing millions of bucks in a startup run by a 19 year old I'd be doing a large amount of investigation. Doesn't seem like anyone did

How many investors did not invest after they investigated? We'll never know. Theranos HR and legal dept. were fierce against any whistleblowers. One person even committed suicide because of the involved stress.

I had not heard that - very distressing

I read about it in Bad Blood, it was perhaps the most disturbing fact from the book. Especially given the suicide was in direct consequence of Theranos' scam, and also because I lost my uncle to suicide related to his work (which I suspect was related to ethics). There is a Wikipedia page devoted to the late Ian Gibbons [1] (I didn't verify the content of the entry though). I can highly recommend the book Bad Blood.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)

Jail, I'd assume. Holmes (and Balwani) have been indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud by a federal grand jury (they've pleaded not guilty).

Wire fraud apparently carries a maximum penalty of 20 years, so they could be going away for a while. Holmes is also barred from serving as a director or officer of a public company for 10 years, due to a previous SEC settlement.

She's very ambitious but now most people have lost confidence in her, so she will be able to pursue meaningful goals but not with the help of many other people as before. Quite a pity, imagine charismatic people using their cunning to benefit the world instead.... what a place it would be.

That kind of charisma is toxic pretty much by definition.

Also, when was the last time someone running an ethically clean and successful charity or social enterprise got the kind of press people like Holmes do?

Holmes is a rich narcissistic kook, but Theranos was the product of a business culture which values hyper-driven narcissistic kooks who surround themselves with exploitation and drama over steady mature professionalism.

Would she need to work? I presume she got some money out at some point.

She was rich to begin with. She never had to work, and presuming she didn't burn family money in this adventure never will have to work.

Edited to clarify, that "rich to begin with" refers to family money.

If you read the book, you'll find that her parents were never especially wealthy. Her extended family was wealthy at one point, but she grew up in a solidly middle-class lifestyle. Her father worked for NGOs and non-profits. They had good connections, but didn't seem to have a lot of money. One of the conflicts that Holmes had to deal with came from her father's envy of a neighbor and friend who truly was wealthy.

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