Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Anne Holmes (born February 3, 1984 ) is an American entrepreneur. She is the founder and former CEO of Theranos, a now defunct company known for their fraudulent claims to have revolutionized blood testing using surprisingly small volumes of blood such as from a fingerprick. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of Theranos. By the next year, following revelations of potential fraud, Forbes revised her net worth to zero dollars, and Fortune named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders".

The decline of Theranos began in 2015, when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's technology claims, and whether Holmes had potentially misled investors and the government. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos and Holmes with deceiving investors by "massive fraud" through false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of her blood-testing technology; Holmes settled the charges by paying a $500,000 fine, returning shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos, and being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years. In June 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and former Theranos chief operating officer Ramesh Balwani on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers.

The early credibility of Theranos was in part interpreted as an effect of Holmes's personal connections and ability to recruit the support of influential people including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis, and Betsy DeVos. Holmes was in a relationship with her chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, whom she met when she was 18 and he was 37.

Holmes's career, the rise and dissolution of her company, and the subsequent fallout comprise the subject of a book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by the Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou.

• From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes, accessed 23 March 2019.