US court upholds Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's conviction | Hacker News Reader

US court upholds Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's conviction

theguardian.com

79 pointsstevekemp107 comments

Bad Blood is a good book

> She described federal prison as “hell and torture” and said she was “not the same person I was back then”. “The people I love the most have to walk away as I stand here, a prisoner, and my reality sinks in”

would love to see Holmes as a face of prison reform when she gets out, she has the right skills and connections to really make a difference

Why Holmes? I can’t tell if this is sarcasm. I would rather not see a person known to be psychopathic a lier, and lacking empathy (imagine the mindset to fake medical devices, having a direct impact on the healthcare of individual people) be the forefront of a social progressive movement. Can we not find someone with better qualities?

the thing is, to spearhead prison reform, you need someone who was once a prisoner, and the intersection of that with "compassionate, honest, empathetic" characteristics would not appear to be very large

> the intersection of that with "compassionate, honest, empathetic" characteristics would not appear to be very large

It's also not to be found here. You're applying character traits to a person just because of their gender.

I'm doing what now? The point is there's a high correlation between being a prisoner and being a psychopath, so you do not necessarily get to have super high honesty and compassion or whatever in the list of traits of a person who will reform prison. What you do get to do, is look at the set of actual people who have experienced prison (and therefore are most motivated and qualified to fix it), and sort by entrepreneurial skill. Hers is not zero.

>The point is there's a high correlation between being a prisoner and being a psychopath,

America imprisons vastly more than any other liberal nation. We have no shortage of people who spent a decade in prison despite not committing the crime and eventually getting out.

Why Holmes over people who didn't deserve prison?

How come none of those people did it yet?

She is a psychopath, she has not changed, the "loving, caring mother" thing is a false persona she has created.

Yikes, two humans born for purely selfish purposes. Couple of dates: indictment: June 15, 2018; trial: August 31, 2021.

> In early 2019, Holmes became engaged to Evans, a 27-year-old heir to Evans Hotels, a family-owned group of hotels in the San Diego area.[136][135] In mid-2019, Holmes and Evans reportedly married in a private ceremony.[137][138] Holmes and Evans have not directly confirmed whether the two are legally married, and several sources continue to refer to him as her "partner" rather than her husband.[139][140] Holmes gave birth to a son in July 2021.[140] In October 2022, weeks before her sentencing hearing, it was reported she was pregnant with a second child.[141] Holmes was accused of conceiving a second child, according to a court filing from February 2023, as a strategy for delaying the start of her prison term.

I have no intimate knowledge of US prisons, but she seems to be kept in a minimum security prison: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Camp,_Bryan

Apparently, according to this: https://federalcriminaldefenseattorney.com/prison-life/priso... there are no guards or fences, hardly any violence. There is a gym, various sports facilities and medical care.

I'm not volunteering to swap my life for this, but "hell and torture"..???

The self-pitying words of entitlement coupled with a persecution complex.

Text of decision,

(.pdf) https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca9.341...

Arguments in video format,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mP8zxSi6g ("22-10312 USA v. Elizabeth Holmes: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (23.2K subscribers)")

I wonder if Elon will go in for defrauding Investors?

How much should TSLA stock tank before Investors get wary?

The judge in the middle seems to be having a particularly great day and is quite cheerful. Unlike the rest two (flankies) who have a more serious (if I may say 'grim') dispositions I have come to associate judges with :)

I don't quite understand the reasoning for putting her in prison.

Yes, she deserves to be punished, but surely house arrest, community service etc makes more sense for a crime of this nature, rather than using tax payer money to house her for 9 years when she isn't a credible threat to society.

Deterrent to future like-minded scumbags.

But there’s no clear evidence that lengthy prison sentences act as a deterrent.

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/18613/chapter/7#135

That study doesn’t focus on people who are used to caviar and champagne as a normal thing versus an out of reach dream. These bourgeoisie think they’re untouchable, and largely are, so the threat of this is the only deterrent we have short of a Place de la Concorde situation

Exactly. The more you have to lose the worst you have it in prison.

If you already live in hell outside of prison then prison won't feel that bad. Could even feel better because it's like a dopamine detox. I'm talking here about prison not like it is depicted in Hollywood, with rape and no protection from assault. I'm talking about prison as it should be, enforcing a near monastic lifestyle where the detained has no distractions from their own conscience and can contemplate their predicament

Doesn't seem to deter YC calling them the 2025 intake.

She stole from billionaires. If she had stolen from poor people or the government she’d be lauded as a hero.

You could probably say the same thing about tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in prison.

I’m not someone who wants prison purely as a punitive measure. I’d much rather the focus be on rehabilitation. But you’re making it sound like Elizabeth Holmes was accused of something relatively "harmless" like insider trading, rather than what she actually did.

A small sample from Wikipedia:

> In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to Theranos based on a 2015 inspection of its Newark, California lab, reporting that the facility caused "immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety" due to a test to determine the correct dose of the blood-thinning drug warfarin

She was not convicted of crimes against patients. She was only convicted of crimes against investors.

I’m aware, and Al Capone was busted for taxes. I’m still content with his conviction and punishment.

It seems cruel and unkind to punish someone for a crime they were tried for and found not guilty (on all counts) of.

True, poor Al Capone!

Sadly this is an explicit allowance of the justice system. :-/ There was a case about it, though I don’t have the reference handy.

What is this, army of accounts for hire to sway sympathies like its election times?

Most people in prisons, especially US prisons, are not anyhow threat to society. That 1 or 2 joints that got people in bible belt states for solid 2 years is one example.

If you are questioning basis of basically every law system in place anywhere in the world, thats a fine discussion but please frame it like that. She is a criminal, fraud, liar, thief and god knows what else, in range of hundreds of millions. Jail for her, a long one, no special sympathy for nepo kids. Sort of litmus paper of whether US justice system still works as intended.

You're in agreement then that people who commit tax fraud should be imprisoned?

Especially the wealthy and/or powerful, 100% yes.

Sure, everyone who commits tax fraud, including the wealthy and powerful, will go to jail then. We're going to need more prisons.

edit: just realized that al capone was busted for tax evasion, not tax fraud. we're going to need even more prisons than I realized.

I’m more than happy to start laying brick myself if it means holding the wealthy accountable by the legal system.

This isn’t the strong argument you think it is.

I'm not making any argument, just stating your position.

Great! Let’s build the white collar prisons, then.

I won't be participating in the building of prisons, but I will watch you build them.

She could not have been charged with crimes against investors if the patient's blood work results were correct. She knowingly lied about the capability of these devices knowing it would garner investors. That's the crime she got convicted of, luckely no one appears to have died from the invalid medical testing.

If threat to society is the only purpose to put someone behind bars, then a large swathe of the incarcerated population wouldn't be behind bars. You could make the same argument for Bernie Madoff, who probably isn't a danger to society considering his fraud is out in the open.

..And that he passed away in 2021.

> You could make the same argument for Bernie Madoff, who probably isn't a danger to society considering his fraud is out in the open.

Pretty sure Madoff isn’t currently a danger to society because he’s been dead for almost 4 years now.

Pretty superficial way to not address GP's underlying point, which makes sense whether or not Madoff died.

i'm actually quite happy that he died without me noticing

She made alot of powerful people look foolish.

The nature of how the people around her exploited her also makes her a great candidate for being made an example. She has no friends to explain away her crimes, which were significant — this isn’t a Martha Stewart scenario.

We need stronger punishments for our robber barons, not weaker. We are witnessing the society we experience when they are not kept in check and it is the worst humanity has to offer.

In good part it serves as a deterrent for others, given that the US legal system is precedent-based.

It makes sense to prevent her from talking to people who might try to pull another similar stunt.

She is a credible threat of defrauding more people.

If you invest in her next startup you are waiving your right to cry foul in the eveny you lose your money.

Should bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis also be on home arrest? Sometimes it is about punishment not rehabilitation.

Joke's on you, bankers didn't serve any jail time for 2008.

Having said that, I agree 9 years seems extensive. We're just accustomed to these long prison terms. I would have thought 2-3 years plus fines, maybe 5.

The US has the largest prison population in the world both by capita and in total numbers. This is an indication that something is horribly wrong.

the joke's on all of us as long as we continue letting them get away

Who did things that were illegal at the time?

(very few people should have gone to prison, but Sean Quinn did for Anglo-Irish Bank, and everyone involved in the US robo-signing fiasco should have at least got a conviction and ban from positions of trust)

Prison isn't just punishment, it's a deterrent to future criminals. If white collar criminals got to chill at home for few years, do you think we would have end up with more victims of fraud, or fewer?

It's a really terrible deterrent because people are not rational actors.

That said, I'm all for jailing her as long as non-white-collar criminals are getting the same treatment.

Edit: This seems to be a controversial opinion as this comment's score is continuously going up and down.

Given our vast prison population, perhaps it's not such an effective deterrent.

Our vast population of white collar criminals?

The US has a lot of people in prison for non-violent offences. It even has a huge number of people in pre-trial detention, where other countries have better bail systems and things like electronic tagging to allow people to stay out of jail before they are convicted.

Non-violent != white collar

I think you’d find a lot of support for the idea that we should have fewer people total in jail (i.e. funneling drug users into medical care, use community service for non-violent property crimes, etc.) but more white collar criminals going to jail.

As a simple example, I’ve heard a lot of people of all ages comment that the bankers would repeat the kinds of crimes they committed during the mortgage bubble because they made more profits than they were fined. Jail time is far more plausibly a deterrent in those cases.

There are other ways to punish people other than putting them in prison.

It's not an effective deterrent because people who commit crimes don't often stop and think "oh if I do this I will get caught." In fact if you've ever reported crimes to police as a victim you've probably had the experience that there's really not much that they do other than take a police report and if it's a crime against property basically tell you to call your insurance company. Prison is a deterrent to you or me because we think things through before we act. But criminals often have really bad impulse control relative to the general population and so any preventative measures that rely on impulse control won't work on them.

There is more than one type of criminal in the world. What you’re describing is more true of the guys spontaneously grabbing purses or backpacks, not white collar criminals who spend years planning and maintaining their crimes. They’re far more likely to weigh the risk of serious enforcement, and jail is far more of a deterrent for them.

She's a sociopath who defrauded a number of high-profile U.S. presidential cabinet officials, and was jailed for forming "the most illustrious board in U.S. corporate history" and then shamelessly deceiving them into publicly supporting her.

The support of Schultz, Kissinger, Matis et al rendered her the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, youngest recipient of the Horatio Alger Award, and Obama's Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship. She then chilled out John Carreyrou and The Wall Street Journal financially and legally for trying to expose her deception

The only reason she was not convinced for patient fraud was a weak jury deciding the patients were "one-step removed" from Holmes as CEO.

Yes and none of these people asked anyone with clinical laboratory knowledge whether this device could work. Many analytes need a venous draw to attain accurate results. So even if they only used a drop of blood that blood would have to be obtained the same way as a tube is now.

It would be like a young man dropping out of school and claiming they have GPU technology that is 2x nvidia performance. Everyone would laugh and demand proof. But they all didn't do the most basic of due diligence here

She largely defrauded idiots on the investor side, granted. But that's still not allowed. Even defrauding idiots is a crime.

Agree. But the crypto racket seems to be on a roll as never before nonetheless.

Crypto does seem to have carved out a "most laws don't apply to us" niche, and particularly in the US this seems like it'll get worse before it gets better. That hardly excuses Holmes, though.

There is a different bar for regular joe investors and "Professional Investors" [0]. These were Professional Investors.

[0] A professional investor is an individual or legal entity that possesses the experience, knowledge, and expertise necessary to make their own investment decisions and duly assess the risks associated with these decisions.

Are you talking about accredited investors? In the US, the only criteria to be an accredited investor, more or less, is having a net worth of over a million or an income over 200k. The above looks a bit more like a European definition, though even there it's optimistic, and in practice "has lots of money" is good enough for accredited investor status in the EU as well.

To be clear, most of the investors weren't VCs and things; they were, largely, individual rich idiots (or their family offices, at their direction). Theranos had trouble with real VCs, who wanted inconvenient things like audited accounts.

The rules protecting accredited investors are indeed laxer than those protecting normal people, but it is _still not legal to defraud them_.

House arrest would make the math on “should I try fraud”lean heavily towards fraud I think.

Maybe even more so if you’ve got a nice house.

Fraud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud

US Sentencing Commission > Fraud: https://www.ussc.gov/topic/fraud

What would deter fraud?

"Here’s a look inside Donald Trump’s $355 million civil fraud verdict" (2024) https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-letitia-james-new-yor...

"Trump hush money verdict: Guilty of all 34 counts" .. "Guilty: Trump becomes first former US president convicted of felony crimes" (2024) https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-te...

"Trump mistakes [EJC] for [ex-wife]. #Shorts" https://youtube.com/shorts/0tq3rh6bh_8 .. https://youtu.be/lonTBp9h7Fo?si=77DIJMrpBRgLcsMK

I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean regarding the topic.

> House arrest would make the math on “should I try fraud” lean heavily towards fraud I think.

You argue that house arrest is an insufficient deterrent for the level of fraud committed by defendant A.

Is the sentencing for defendant A consistent with the US Sentencing Guidelines, and consistent with other defendants convicted of fraud?

> Maybe even more so if you’ve got a nice house.

Defendant B apparently isn't even on house arrest, and apparently sent someone else to their civil rape deposition obstructively and fraudulently.

The fact that different cases play out differently, some possibly unwise and unjust is no surprise to me.

"Lock her up!" He shouted about her. https://youtu.be/wS_Nrz5dNeU?si=XasLFHXQygx7IgSw ... /? lock her up: https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Lock+he...

Trump got a fraud conviction and zero sentence.

The fact that injustice exists does not surprise me. Both in jail would be fine with me, but I wouldn't "not" put one in jail because of the other.

This, I barely leave the house anyway.

This comment is outrageous.

People like to be soft on crime, until crime happens to them.

Its the complete inability to empathize for fellow citizens that actually do the right thing, and contribute to society; instead relating with the criminal mind.

Its a very weird stockholm's syndrome offshoot.

There's a world of difference between mercy and recklessness. Justice must work for society to function. No one is getting beheaded here for stealing an apple.

in the US there is always racial aspect to this. if this was a person of color and crime was selling some shit drugs on the streets, the same commenter would be like “life in prison without parole.” but for cute white blondie it is “eh put her on house arrest, she is no danger to society” :)

Is there? Here the sentiment seems to be arguing fiercely to reinforce the incarceration of a blonde white because she defrauded. Even if the victims she defrauded were despicable elites. She's not getting a pass, at all. No robin hood here.

Then we have the drive to decriminalize drugs, driven by all citizen groups, but which mostly affects minorities only.

Aren't things moving in the right direction, at least?

I would want to believe that but I don’t think the realities “on the ground” match up.

her not getting a pass is an exception, we have other examples besides this outlier?

People could have died, or maybe did.

The reasoning for putting her in prison seems to be based on the severity of doing an almost a billion dollar in fraud. That is in the ballpark of some of the worlds largest bank robberies.

There are good reason to question prison sentences for non-violent crime, and asking about the goals society has. If the goal is deterrent, then studies do show that harsher punishment can be effective if the crime is done under partial rational decision based on the risk of getting caught and the punishment if they do. If the goal is rehabilitation, then the results is less clear and may have the opposite effect.

There is a lot of research and studies on this subject. Some compare different countries, like Norway vs US, and other compare states/cities, or the same location but different years with different strategies. To my knowledge there isn't a lot of consensus in what actually works.

Why would you suggest she isn't a threat? I think while incarcerated she she have additional restrictions to prevent her from scamming anyone else.

Being in prison makes it less likely she will be able to commit another fraud.

The miscarriage of justice here is that she was acquitted of the widespread and deliberate medical malpractice, not that she has been jailed. She absolutely was a danger to everyone who trusted the tests from her machines.

Didn't she steal billions of dollars? What do you think bank robbers should get, a 5 minute time out?

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