Happy Nice Mall

SAN JOSE, California — Using charisma, poise, and a sprinkling of scientific jargon, Elizabeth Holmes convinced investors to give him nearly $1 billion to build his blood testing startup Theranos. they all came crashing in 2018It turned out that the company had major problems after technology and business deals.

On Tuesday, Ms. Holmes used the same techniques to convince the jury she was not guilty of fraud.

take a stand in self-defense for the third dayMs. Holmes presented her most important arguments to refute the 11 scams that prosecutors accused her of. He made eye contact with the jurors and tilted his head as he claimed he couldn’t intentionally fool anyone about Theranos’ technology.

Ms. Holmes, 37, oscillated between giving credible accounts of Theranos’ scientific research and presenting herself as a naive and ambitious founder who believed her company’s technology worked. He tried to reframe past events as misunderstandings about his intentions. He hinted that the board should have given him better advice. He claimed that he had too much reliance on the doctors, scientists and engineers working at Theranos.

And he portrayed himself as an entrepreneur who cared deeply—perhaps too much—about protecting his company’s brand and financial future, so much so that he made decisions that were later fraudulently distorted by the prosecution.

The purpose of the defense’s full-day testimony was to cast doubts in the minds of jurors about the prosecution’s case: Ms. Holmes had deliberately claimed Theranos could revolutionize healthcare, even though she knew the company’s technology was lacking. White-collar criminal cases are often highly technical and complex, and prosecutors face the burden of proving that the accused intends to commit fraud.

“The whole game is based on knowledge and intent, and it’s the hardest thing for the prosecution to prove,” said Andrey Spektor, attorney for Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and a former federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York.

Mr Spektor said the government’s best evidence of Ms. Holmes’ intent was circumstantial evidence from documents and others’ testimonies. But Mrs. Holmes said she could testify directly about what she knew and intended.

Ms. Holmes’ high-profile trial stands as a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley startups that have embraced the same kind of bustle, ambition, and world-changing idealism that has brought her to the top echelons of the industry. Despite the tech industry’s confidence in the hype, few executives accused of lying to investors have made Theranos an outlier.

But as tech startups continue to rise, record amount of moneySome standard practices of governance and diligence are going out the window, investors and entrepreneurs said. If Miss Holmes is found guilty and sent to prison, the verdict may eclipse the good times and inspire a new sense of caution among the free builders.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Holmes began a grueling day of testimony at 9 a.m. and remained on the podium all day. He repeatedly voiced the central theme of the defense: he believed that Theranos’ technology worked. Members of the jury were shown e-mails from various scientists and doctors working in the company’s laboratory, describing their successful work, trials and other discoveries.

Channing Robertson, a Stanford University professor who joins Theranos’ board of directors, told him his ideas were “very promising.” Miss Holmes testified. In an e-mail from Theranos chief scientist Ian Gibbons to Ms. Holmes regarding Theranos’ tests, he wrote: “Our immunoassays match the best possible results in a clinical laboratory.”

Ms Holmes admitted to personally inserting the pharmaceutical companies’ logos into Theranos’ approval reports without their consent, compromising one of the prosecution’s biggest pieces of evidence. Them reports The documented studies of blood tests that Theranos did in partnership with pharmaceutical companies and helped convince investors and partners that the venture was the real deal.

Representatives of drug manufacturers Pfizer and Schering-Plough said earlier in the trial that their companies did not write or approve the reports. However, Ms. Holmes sent reports with the Pfizer logo to investors and partners like Walgreens as part of her talk to get them to invest in and do business with Theranos.

Ms Holmes said on Tuesday she added the logos to the reports only to show that the work they describe was done in partnership with pharmaceutical companies. He said he did not intend to mislead investors.

“I heard the testimony in this case and I wish I had done it differently,” he said.

In response to testimony from lab workers who said they were left disappointed by Theranos’ sleazy science, Ms. Holmes said she never forced anyone to sign anything they disagreed with. He added that Theranos will not allow him to perform any test that has not been approved by the laboratory director, and he is not authorized to make such a decision.

He also debunked one of prosecutors’ biggest claims: that Theranos secretly did most of the blood tests on commercially available machines from companies like Siemens, not himself. Theranos introduced the small blood analyzers known as Edisons and MiniLabs, capable of performing hundreds of different tests on a drop of blood. But in reality, it could only run a dozen tests, and Siemens had modified its machines to run tests with less blood.

Ms. Holmes said she never told investors, partners, the public, or her own board members that since Theranos is making changes to these machines, the company is doing most of its testing on Siemens devices. He said he was worried that Siemens or other competitors would copy these changes.

“This was an invention that we understood from our consultant that we should keep as a trade secret,” he said.

Ms. Holmes did not delve into her relationship with her boyfriend of over ten years, Ramesh Balwani, who was chief operating officer of Theranos. The couple was indicted together, but their cases were split last year. Mr. Balwani, referred to as “Sunny”, will be put on trial next year. Both pleaded not guilty.

The couple kept their relationship a secret, but Ms. Holmes’ lawyers said in the files that they expected Mr. Balwani, who is 18 years older than Ms. Holmes, to testify that he abused her emotionally and physically during their relationship. They also said they were waiting to call Mindy Mechanic, an expert witness focusing on abusive relationships, to explain Ms Holmes’ accusations.

Mr. Balwani’s role in the alleged fraud was discussed nearly every day of the trial, but Ms. Holmes’ testimony mentioned him only when necessary, such as identifying an email thread used as evidence.

At the start of the trial, Judge Edward Davila of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, who oversaw the case, instructed the jurors not to speculate as to why Mr. Balwani was not there.

Miss Holmes’ testimony will continue next week.

Erin Woo contributing reporting.