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Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

They weren't really being charged with the stuff about patients, in part I think because the communication between Holmes and investors was direct, whereas Holmes was not personally communicating with the patients. Basically, the prosecutors went for the charges that were easier to prove.

If Theranos still existed as a company, it would doubtless be getting buried under a blizzard of charges relating to how Theranos, the company, treated their patients. One of several reasons why Theranos the company no longer exists.

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> [She wasn’t] really being charged with [wire fraud with regard to] patients

Unless the word "really" is doing some heavy lifting here, this is incorrect. There were multiple counts directly and specifically related to defrauding patients. These counts came back not guilty, but they were, in fact, charged, and customers testified in court in support of these charges.

The articles says "This case was specifically about what Holmes told Theranos investors, although her lies also impacted partners and patients" which I took as the patients claims were not part of this trial, but maybe they were?

I think I would try to have them as separate trials.

You're correct, I saw that all of the counts were wire fraud or conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and didn't realize that they included wire fraud...of patients.

I have to think, though, that the fact that it was such an odd charge in relation to patients, had a part in why those charges didn't stick. I think wire fraud in relation to investors succeeded because it was a much more accurate description of the act involved. But you're correct, some of the counts that didn't stick were wire fraud related to patients.

What happened to the people working for Holmes/Theranos who were doing the legwork of systematically and knowingly defrauding patients?

It's fairly easy to set up situations where the people doing the actual work are not knowingly defrauding anyone. The salespeople are told the machine is real, the delivery people never see inside the lab, the testers inside the lab are trained by the few people really in on it (I don't think they had the proper independent training) so they don't know how bad the tests are, and the scientists think everyone knows they're working on version 2.0 but they're told not to discuss readiness, leading the salespeople to get the wrong idea. Heck, most frauds don't want their people to know that it's a fraud - too many people raises secrecy and conscience issues.

In other words, Theranos was intentionally set up as a criminal organization?

Correct, it is all about what they have a paper trail for. It is also very difficult to prove harm to patients. Any prosecution would depend on a lot of statistics and scientific detective work, which the prosecutors frankly aren't equipped to take on.

Theranos tests gave some inaccurate results, but the defense will say Traditional blood tests can be wrong as well. This devolves into statistical evaluation of the methods used for testing, e.g. if the standard test is 99.9 what was the Theranos result?

This is a huge mess, and why the pragmatic charge was financial fraud.

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