elizabeth holmes
I remember at some point growing up, I saw Elizabeth Holmes on magazine covers and spread across the internet as the "new Steve Jobs". I was fascinated to finally see a woman in that position; I think the #girlboss era wasn't quite there yet, and I welcomed a role model in spaces that were usually male-dominated.
I kinda liked that she seemed very focused on her craft and the tech, while dressing in a more understated, but professional way. Instead of coming across like other "successful" women who always seemed to be overshadowed by a more successful husband, propped up by generational wealth, and visibly wanting to spread the message "Yes, I am a business woman, but I am still a very feminine, fuckable trophy wife!" I could see myself in Elizabeth, because I also had a lower voice (but not as low, and not cartoonishly faked) and wore black turtlenecks. When it came out that Theranos was a huge scam, I was shocked, but also very intrigued. How can people lie that long, and involve so many people in that lie? How did people comply for this long? What role did she play in it?
I sucked up as much as I could about it at the time, which initially wasn't as much as it is now, aside from press and YouTube videos covering it. The facts about her person and Theranos' product were clear, as well as the allegations from the article, but nothing else had been established. From the initial reveal to the trial and sentencing was quite a while (reveal in 2015, went to prison in 2023), and the book, podcasts, and documentaries took so long to come out or were partially inaccessible to me. I kind of lost sight of it for a while, especially because of the pandemic. I got into other grifters like Anna Delvey, who also fascinated me by the way she seemingly avoided the usual subtle "checks" we have to detect if someone is real, just by acting like she belonged and making it up as she went. Puzzles me.
I have never idealized the crimes these women did, nor do I want to emulate any of it - I just want to understand how something so impossible in my mind was actually pulled off. The audacity, the tower of lies, the house of cards they build, everything. I am obsessed with the way audacity and luck seem to line up just right for these women to support their fantasy/delusion, and how it all falls apart.
The announcement of the documentary "You Can See Everything" (teaser, trailer) by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim really rekindled my passion for the Theranos scandal. I haven't gotten my hands on The Inventor yet, but I finally was able to watch The Dropout on Disney+ and listen to Season 2 of the podcast of the same name (which covers the trial), I read Bad Blood by John Carreyrou, the journalist who initially broke the story in the WSJ and then wrote a book about it, and immersed myself back into some YouTube videos like
- The Video You Need To See Before The Elizabeth Holmes Doc (recently)
- A Deep Dive Into The Dangerous Lies, Riches & Narcissism That Built Theranos & Oceangate (recently)
- The Rise & Downfall of The Ex-Billionaire Felon Elizabeth Holmes (from 4 years ago)
- Everything You Don’t Know About Elizabeth Holmes (from 3 years ago)
- The Crazy Things You Don't Know About Elizabeth Holmes & Theranos (from 3 years ago)
- The Wild Things The Dropout Left Out (from 4 years ago)
- And an interesting trailer body language analysis by BehavorialArts, will look forward to his full analysis of the documentary
Some of these inevitably cover the same thing at times, but still, CoffeeandCults was basically covering this from day 1 even back then as things developed, and even went through court files and chat messages between Elizabeth and Sunny, and I love the way she does it. So I knew I needed to go back there and catch up on new stuff I had missed.
What fascinates me about her now is to continuously find more crumbs that settle the question whether she knowingly lied, or whether she really believes it. At this point, it seems she really does believe it, even after all this time, and after the lengthy trial. She really thinks she was sabotaged, unfairly treated, and put behind bars for no reason.
Someone pulling off an insane grift can be scary by itself, but it's less scary to me if they knew they were doing it and were calculated about it (like Sunny was). But the other option is way scarier to me... that you can really give 20 years of your life to the scam, sleep like 4-6h a day and work the rest of it, no life experiences, no friends, all into the company since 19, known no life outside it... and it was all for something that was never real and could have never worked. All the praise you got was ill-gotten. Everything you thought you achieved is gone. And your mind cannot even comprehend that or give that up or see it for what it is because it's so painful and would make this huge chunk of your life just void. You are so delusional and it's all you have left and all you have ever experienced... that's a scary outcome. Makes sense then that she is already admitting she will continue this grift once she gets out; this is all she has ever known and the only goal she has ever had.
Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes are the kinda interest of mine I could talk ages about, but only when prompted, only when asked something, or when something new about it comes out or piques my interest. I get no fun out of it if I would just write a Wikipedia article 2.0 about her upbringing or something, so I won't summarize everything here. But what still (or currently) moves me about this case in no particular order is:
- This woman doesn't have any degrees. She's not an engineer, she is not a doctor or otherwise an expert in the medical field, and people still believed her. Just dropping out of Stanford after a little over a year or so was enough to give her credence, which is nuts if you think about it.
- None of the patents her name was on actually had considerable contributions by her.
- She still cannot grasp what even went wrong. That while her cartridges and all physically worked in the sense that they diluted blood or pushed it around, they were useless for tests. The way you press the blood out of the finger completely ruins potassium tests and others. The volume is too low, or the dilution too high. The fact that she had to use competitor machines to do the tests. The fact that her employees were instructed to fake the validation of the results. Even after the laboratory was so bad it was forcibly closed for 2 years, she still doesn't see why.
- She created a fake lab with machines lined up just for Joe Biden to visit and see, even though this was never used for testing.
- Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger were on the board!
- People were wrongly diagnosed with cancers, HIV, or a supposed miscarriage when they weren't. It led to medication changes, fears and trauma. She was not afraid to trial her non-functioning machines on terminal cancer patients either.
- She and Sunny abused employees and created an environment of fear at work, and constantly immediately fired people. She had people followed by private investigators, had employees build up dossiers on other employees to be able to blackmail them, had the social media of all employees surveilled, and more. An extreme control freak that has repeatedly threatened to ruin people's lives if they go against her.
- Ian Gibbons' suicide is her fault and she never even reached out to his wife or apologized; to her, it was just one less person to speak out about her.
- Her prison sentence doesn't even include a punishment for the patient mistreatment, just the (wire) fraud, as they weren't able to prove it was maliciously/with negligence, because they couldn't get any functioning viable records out of Theranos in that regard. Such a joke honestly.
- I love Erika Cheung for what she did and how strong she was.
- She's in the same prison as Ghislaine Maxwell and befriended her. Man, what a collab that will be of women who are sure they did nothing wrong and it was mostly the evil men in their lives (allegedly)...
- Despite only starting her prison sentence in 2023, she'll move to a halfway house next year. What a joke, right?
- It's pretty widely accepted that a big reason for having her two children at the time she did was to delay the trial or turn it in her favor by weaponizing motherhood and the kids; hoping to elicit pity and the view that one shouldn't separate her from her children. Pretty sick. She even went to court with those glowing milking machines on her breasts to make that point.
- Her Twitter account is super active because her new boyfriend Billy is running it. She seems to think (and and says so in her bio) that Billy only posts what she tells him to. But the volume of posts and interactions with others suggest otherwise; she can't even tell Billy to post that much, let alone spend hours every day telling him who or what to respond to. She has no phone or internet in prison. "Her" tweets are also pretty unhinged at times; seems like they aren't afraid to suck up to the MAHA crowd as well.
- She and said boyfriend are already organizing the new grift, Haemanthus, a company in Billy's name that does virtually the same thing Theranos does and even shares some branding of it, but initially limited to pets this time because that has less regulations. And yes, despite everything, they already managed to raise some money, and he also comes from money. It seems like Elizabeth is only disgraced in the general (poorer) public; for rich people, the problem seems to have been that she let herself get caught. Running schemes like this is seemingly normal in the world of investors, just a slipup, better luck next time.
- Her not being allowed to be on boards of public companies runs out before her prison sentence even ends, and it doesn't apply to Haemanthus anyway, which is private.
It's so unbelievable that after all of this, there is no regret, no admission, and the open declaration to do it again. This woman is dangerous.
I'm looking forward to the documentary to not only see her extremely concerning and off-putting behavior, but also because apparently 2/3rds of it is dedicated to exposing how messed up Billy also is. They really deserve each other apparently, and she has not learned from Sunny at all.
Will definitely write another post once the docu is out on Oct 16.
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