Eleven years and three months in federal prison do not seem to be the place for a pretty face like Elizabeth Homes but she is going there for her great lies at Theranos.
But this is exactly where she will be beginning April 2023 after being found guilty of ‘masterminding’ a grand lie that swindled the wealthy of hundreds of millions worth of investments in Theranos, private health care, and life sciences company based in Palo Alto, California.
Was it intense ambition? Or the competitive streak that drove her to rob investors of their money? Was it her persuasive nature or her pretty face that blinded people to the lie that she has perpetuated?
The grand lie at Theranos
Holmes and her assumed lover Balwani advertised and persuaded doctors and patients to avail of Theranos’s blood testing laboratory services, despite knowing that Theranos was incapable of producing reliable and accurate results.
The scandal dominated headlines. Readers all over the world were both aghast yet spellbound by this attractive, bright-eyed lady. And while the world was outraged by the scheme (especially the investors), everyone wanted to know more about the woman behind the most-talked-about lie in the history of healthcare.
Intensely competitive
At the young age of 7, Elizabeth attempted to invent her time machine, with a notebook full of diagrams and detailed engineering sketches. When she was 9 years old, she told relatives that she aimed to become a billionaire when she grows up. She uttered this goal with “utmost seriousness and determination.”
According to relatives, Elizabeth had an “intense competitive streak” from a young age. She regularly plays Monopoly with her younger brother and cousin, and she would insist on playing until the end, collecting the houses and hotels until she won.
Elizabeth also had an instinct for invention and a burning desire. “What I really want out of life is to discover something new, something that mankind didn’t know was possible to do,” she wrote in a letter to her father when she was just nine years old.
Elizabeth once told The New Yorker that she was heavily influenced as a kid by stories of doing things to help others. “I grew up with those stories about greatness and about people deciding to spend their lives on something purposeful, and what happens to them when they make that choice—the impact on character and quality of life,” she said.
Inventor or fraud?
Elizabeth Holmes is the daughter of a U.S. government aid worker and a congressional committee staffer. She grew up in Washington, D.C., and Houston, Texas, and spent time in China during high school. While there, she had a start-up business selling computer software to universities in Asia. Upon her return to the U.S., she pursued a degree in electrical and chemical engineering at Stanford University.
Being in college appears to be “too slow” for Elizabeth Holmes. She dropped out of Stanford and found Theranos utilizing her tuition money. Having raised over $700m in investments from the likes of Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, the company became the rising star of Silicon Valley and was valued at over $9 billion, and was heralded as the female Steve Jobs. She was just 30 years old.
Clandestine romance exposed
Before dropping out of Stanford, Elizabeth met Balwani. From simple emails, the relationship intensified and Elizabeth was already living with Balwani in his Palo Alto condominium. Before September 2009, Balwani joined Theranos in an official capacity and was advising Elizabeth behind the scenes.
The ”lovebirds” went to elaborate lengths to keep their 12-year romance a secret while running Theranos—lying to investors, to employees, and the press.
Sweetness turned sour
During her fraud trial, Elizabeth sang a different tune after years of strategic silence. She claimed that Balwani had emotionally and sexually abused her, and manipulated her into mishandling the company. Balwani fiercely refuted these accusations through his lawyer.
“He told me I didn’t know what I was doing in business, that my convictions were wrong, that he was astonished at my mediocrity, that if I followed my instincts I was going to fail, and that I needed to kill the person I was to become what he called a new Elizabeth that could be a successful entrepreneur.” She further said that Balwani would tell her “not to sleep much, eat only foods that would make me pure and would make me have the most energy possible in the company.”
Elizabeth also claimed that the sexual abuse happened after gruesome fights.
“He would get very angry with me, and then he would sometimes come upstairs to our bedroom and force me to have sex with him when I didn’t want to because he wanted me to know that he still loved me,” she added.
Despite the pain Elizabeth claimed she suffered with Balwani, she also had nice words about him. “He had taught me everything that I thought I knew about business, and I thought he was the best businessperson I knew.”
“Love” amid the “fall”
During Elizabeth Holmes’ high-stakes legal drama that will lead her to federal prison for many years, she managed to find love in William “Billy” Evans – a 29-year-old hospitality heir from California. As told to Vanity Fair, the couple got married in a secret ceremony in 2019.
In that year, Evans and Holmes were living together in an expensive US$5,000-per-month flat in San Francisco. But According to CNBC, the “against-all-odds” lovers have now traded their high rise for an even grander and more luxurious home.
In a New York Post report, it was said that Evans’ family did not initially approve of the relationship. Evans’ parents, William and Susan, were very surprised to hear about his decision to marry the woman behind Theranos. A source even told the publication that the family thought he had been “brainwashed.”
Fraudster-loner-compassionate rolled into one
Holmes describes herself as a joyful loner, collecting insects and fishing with her father.
“I was probably, definitely, not normal,” she said. “I was reading ‘Moby-Dick’ from start to finish when I was about nine. I read a ton of books….The wonderful thing about the way I was raised is that no one ever told me that I couldn’t do those things.”
Board members are charmed by Elizabeth Holmes. Perhaps, this was the reason why she easily got their millions? According to those who worked with her, she is a vigilant listener, and she is disturbingly tranquil; employees say that they can’t remember an instance when she raised her voice. She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, although that’s an inadequate comparison. Those who knew Jobs said. “She has a social consciousness that Steve never had. He was a genius; she’s one with a big heart.”
So, now that Elizabeth has fallen and the grand lie failed, what is her net worth? Does she still have her billions? According to Forbes, after the fall of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes’s net worth went from a reported $4.5 billion to $0 as of 2022.
Was Elizabeth Holmes a swindler through and through or she was just a victim of her wanton desires and unstoppable ambition?