Elizabeth Anne Holmes, a former biotechnology entrepreneur, found guilty of criminal fraud, was born in the United States on February 3, 1984. Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company that saw its valuation soar after the company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing techniques that could use surprisingly small volumes of blood, such as from a fingerprick, was founded in 2003 by Holmes. He served as its chief executive officer (CEO).
Based on the $9 billion value of her business, Forbes declared Holmes the youngest and richest self-made female billionaire in America in 2015. As evidence of possible fraud regarding Theranos’s claims started to emerge the following year, Forbes reduced its estimate of Holmes’s net worth to zero. Fortune included her in its feature piece, “The World’s 19 Most Disappointing Leaders.”
Theranos’ collapse started in 2015, when several regulatory and investigative reports raised questions about the company’s technology promises and whether founder Elizabeth Holmes had misled investors and the government. Theranos and Holmes were accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of “massive fraud” in 2018 for making inflated or false claims about the efficacy of the company’s blood-testing technology.
Holmes settled the case by paying a $500,000 fine, returning 18.9 million shares to the company, giving up her voting control of Theranos, and agreeing to a ten-year ban from holding any position of authority within a public company.
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Investors and patients were the targets of the federal grand jury that indicted Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani in June 2018. They were charged with nine charges of wire fraud & two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In January 2022, Holmes’ trial in U.S. v. Holmes et al. concluded with Holmes’ conviction for misleading investors but not for scamming patients. She will be sentenced in November 2022 and could receive up to 20 years in federal prison and millions in restitution and fines.
Theranos’ legitimacy was partly credited to Holmes’s connections and capacity to enlist the backing of significant individuals, such as Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Jim Mattis, & Betsy DeVos. All of them had served or would later serve as members of the U.S. presidential cabinet. For most of Theranos’ existence, Holmes and Balwani had a secret relationship. She began dating hotel heir Billy Evans after Theranos failed, and they had a son in 2021.
A book by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou titled Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, an HBO documentary feature film titled The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, and a Hulu miniseries titled The Dropout all focus on Holmes’s career, the rise and fall of her company, and the fallout that followed.
How Tall Is Elizabeth Holmes?
Elizabeth Holmes is 36 years old and stands 5 feet 6 inches tall (169.0 cm).
Elizabeth Holmes Early life
Elizabeth Holmes, the daughter of Christian & Noel Holmes, was born in Washington, DC, in 1984.
Her father was a vice president at Enron, the controversial energy corporation accused of scamming investors of billions of dollars, while her mother worked for a Congressional committee.
Elizabeth Holmes EducationIn Houston, Texas, Holmes attended St. John’s School. After taking a Mandarin language course at Stanford University, she became interested in computer programming.
Holmes then enrolled at Stanford with a chemical engineering major. She worked at the Genome Institute of Singapore after completing her first year at Stanford, analyzing blood samples in the wake of the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak in Asia.
In 2003, Holmes submitted her initial patent application for a system of topical drug delivery patches. Holmes left Stanford the following year to seek a job in the healthcare technology industry.
How Did Elizabeth Holmes Build Her Net Worth?
Being the founder and CEO of the biotech business Theranos helped Elizabeth Holmes increase her wealth. Thanks to her shares in the company, Elizabeth had a net worth of $4.5 billion when the company’s valuation peaked at $9 billion.
She was the youngest self-made billionaire in the world at the time. But her business was embroiled in a scandal, and the State of Arizona sued it for misleading statements regarding medical equipment. By transferring her stock to stockholders, Holmes would avoid legal action.
It was only a temporary respite since Holmes was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2018. The accusations included providing misleading information about her goods’ efficacy to defraud investors out of more than $700 million. Theranos and Holmes were also accused of lying about Theranos’ sources of income and of making false assertions about the company having contracts with the Department of Defense.
Holmes was compelled to sell her remaining firm shares as part of the SEC settlement. She was also prohibited from having any officer positions at publicly traded companies for ten years. In the end, the business was dissolved in late 2018. In January 2022, Elizabeth was convicted guilty in a court of criminal conspiracy and fraud.
How Rich is Elizabeth Holmes?
Elizabeth Holmes has an essentially zero-dollar net worth. She engaged in a legal dispute and was ultimately found responsible for scamming investors.