Elizabeth Holmes fails to keep customer complaints, test results out of trial | Hacker News Reader

Elizabeth Holmes fails to keep customer complaints, test results out of trial

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75 pointsthrowawaysea52 comments

> Prosecutors say Holmes purposefully frustrated the government's effort. An email from Holmes' attorneys included the password, but failed to mention the private key ... before destroying the original database.

If this was done purposefully as the prosecutors claim, how is this not an additional crime of destroying evidence or failing to respond to a subpeona?

It may well be a separate crime, but it's up to the prosecutors what charges they want to pursue at trial. Maybe they are confident enough to assert this is what happened but don't think they could meet the burden of proof before a jury.

It seems like if you are on trail for crime x and you destroy evidence of crime x.. well it must have been the worst version of crime x and you should get the maximum sentence for crime x.

That's how losing your toll card works!

If only our entire society worked that way! Utopia!

The most applicable law which I can imagine being relevant here would be the anti-shredding provision of Sarbanes-Oxley, and I'm not sure it applies here. It's also possible that she will be charged with something in the future,

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519

Could also fall under contempt if she intentionally did this under subpoena.

I saw Holmes in SF around 18 months back. Photos don't do her justice, she's pretty charismatic in person but more strikingly she seemed very happy in the moment. If I had a similar sword of Damocles hanging over me I'd be in a horrible shape but somehow she seems just fine.

I don't know anything about Holmes.

But if she was a psychopath, then this would track perfectly. Completely unphased and unstressed about the world of chaos she's created around herself.

I always found her to be… uncanny in photos and videos; intense in a disconcerting way. She looks like a perfectly normal CEO but there is something in her expression that suggests she doesn’t approach social interactions like most people. Like she is very calculating and works on a predator-prey worldview. Maybe I’m biased because I only ever looked her up after the allegations against her and said to myself “yup, that’s a psychopath”

The thousand-zuck stare.

There was reporting on how she intentionally changed her voice in public and one time got caught with her real voice. That to me validates her calculating predator-prey view.

That I could rationalize away: women CEOs facing sexism might benefit from acting more ‘corporate’ and dominant, and having a deeper voice is one tool in that arsenal. Good posture, firm handshakes and eye contact, etc. But yea, going to such lengths all the time would require insane amounts of masking that a neurotypical probably couldn’t manage.

You, unlike Holmes, live in the world of reality.

Potentially underrated commentary.

Strongly held beliefs (if delusional) really can paint a much prettier façade over reality. And the worse that reality may become, the more strongly held those beliefs become.

Until the, what was thought to be, unstoppable force of delusion meets the immovable object of reality.

This reminded me of the guy who lived in Charles de Gaulle airport for 18 years[0] despite having numerous opportunities to leave. His own family visited and he pretended not to know them. He demanded to be known as "Sir Alfred" and sabotaged his own chances to leave by not accepting legal documents because they still had his original birth name and location, which he insisted were incorrect. Pretty interesting story, though pretty sad too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehran_Karimi_Nasseri

Anyone would likely be doing alright if we were married to a hotel heir [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes#Personal_life

shes a sociopath as far as the details have been explained.

Is she still doing the fake voice? I truly cannot get enough of this story.

The fake voice is interesting - She read all the literature that people with deeper voices get more respect, more funding and are given the benefit of the doubt more often.

And she said 'Well, that seems easy. I'll just talk lower'

This is the kind of thing 'growth hacker' types would normally idolise, rather than ridicule.

I think the voice thing has been conflated with the fact that she was running a huge scam, which we've decided is generally ok when you're making a food delivery app, but is definitely not ok when you're testing people for HIV.

I don’t fault her for growth hacking truly, but faking a deep voice for years to everyone inside and outside the company is pretty extreme in my opinion. It wasn’t just that she did the voice in a couple important meetings with some Old Guard suits. The voice plus the Steve Jobs cosplay makes her border on performance art. It’s one of my favorite things to happen in the last decade.

It's really not. I have a friend who is a radio dj. She has a very different sounding voice in that role. Hell many people I know have a 'phone voice' they use with everyone but those that are closest to them. This is just an extreme example of it. This woman has done plenty of crimes, trying to turn this voice thing into a symptom of some perceived neurological/psychological condition seems pointless.

People definitely would have idolized her and copied deep talking - if she had succeeded.

Still waiting for the Jennifer Lawrence movie.

I was kinda thinking Mira Sorvino. Too bad shes not a little younger at this point.

Jodie Comer I reckon

How does one even pull that off? What would be her explanation to friends and family? Or did she slowly lower her tone over the course of months or years, so they didn't even notice?

"i have to lower my voice to impress the VC and general Silicon Valley bros" would be my guess

In high school I noticed my sister wore glasses when going out with her friends, but never at any other time. And, after a year or two in high school, hasn't ever worn glasses (that I know of) for many years after. It was clearly just an affectation for her friends and her family just made fun of her in private about it.

You don't have to fool your family about stuff like this. Just your marks.

> In a request to suppress the evidence, Holmes' lawyers argued that the government should be prevented from introducing Theranos test results at trial because a now-destroyed company database could have helped her rebut claims that the tests couldn't consistently produce accurate and reliable results.

Gonna be honest, I nearly admire the sheer fucking gall of it. Sure, the CEO didn't ensure it was retained, but yolo.

"Your honor, because I destroyed the evidence exonerating me, we mustn't consider the evidence incriminating me."

And of course...

> At the time of the transfer of the database, an email from Holmes' attorneys included the password, but failed to mention that a private key would also be necessary for access, according to the judge's ruling.

Ooopsie, forgot to mention you needed that! Oh gosh shucks darn, the database has already been destroyed. But it would have proved our innocence, trust us!

How judges don’t sprain their eyes from rolling them all the time, I do not know.

I wonder what these lawyers are thinking with making such mental gymnastics excuses?

You do whatever you have to - within the law - to provide a defense for your client, and you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. I also like to think they have a keen sense of the absurd.

never, ever forget that people who said she was a liar and a charlatan were shouted down and called misogynists. it was a case of the truth being crushed under the boots of dogma, no matter what these foamy-mouthed people say. and never forget that this obvious bullshit was genuinely endorsed by the most famous and powerful people in the united states.

That this one woman turned out to be a fraud doesn’t absolve the rabid misogynists calling all women frauds.

im not going to engage beyond one comment because petty arguments arent tolerated here. ive never even heard of a person who thought all women are frauds. but that would be dogma. there are no large political camps in the US that do not harbor large and meaningful amounts of dogmatic thought.

https://youtu.be/t1R9IQF0Y9s?t=28m5s

It truly is a sight for sore eyes how long it's taking to jail the female version of Bernie Madoff. I get that it was white collar but c'mon. Anybody else and they'd see 5-10 years in less than a year.

You're right, but an FYI: Madoff took the plea, that's why it was so fast in his case (well, it took fucking forever to "uncover" but then was really fast).

Bernie Madoff ran a ponzi. He paid returns with other investor monies. Holmes ran a pure fraud. She put lives at risk with her tests. Potentially, peopled died. She deserves an extremely long and punitive jail sentence.

People also died from circumstances created by Madoff's fraud, including one of his sons.

I would not put it past Holmes to raise this point as a mitigating factor.

Doubt she will see a day in prison.

It's a lot harder to jail someone for lying about how they are managing a company, and for running a medical lab poorly, than it is for running a ponzi scheme.

Intent matters quite a bit in the former, but not very much in the latter.

When you rob Henry kissenger of millions of dollars and all his buddies who one being bill Clinton ex president, I'm very curious to see what happens next.

I'd almost argue its a net benefit to the world if it wasnt for the fraudulent test results thay real people thought they could rely on.

Any moneys taken from a kissinger "merchant of chaos" types, should be celebrated.

I wonder what the lawyers are up to. Is this a delaying tactic? It buys her a few months of freedom, I suppose. Who is paying for this? I imagine that any money going to her extremely expensive lawyers will not go to her ... alleged ... victims.

Also, who is this law firm that is defending her? I get that it is supposed to be "honorable" to defend "allegedly deplorable" humans. But I was a lawyer once. She is entitled to a vigorous defense, but I sure as heck would not have done it. I like being able to go home and sleep at night.

Then again, her lawyers probably don't get to sleep. Their loss.

I almost flip from disgust to respect when I see how gangster e Holmes is.

She is acting like a typical sociopath, and her behaviour throughout the whole scandal/affair demonstrates it.

My advice, when you meet people like this in real life, stay way as much as you can. Nothing good comes out of them.

Totally agree, and my comment was mostly a flippant reaction to the audacity of her actions. Totally a sociopath and thinks rules/laws/social norms dont apply to her. Its mostly just amazing that obvious terrible behavior and lying is not called out.

You are not alone https://www.elle.com/culture/a36806930/elizabeth-holmes-fans... she is a hero to a lot of women.

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