The closing arguments in the case against Elizabeth Holmes were opened by the prosecutor. She was on the phone with her bank to clear a check early, as the company she founded was running out of money.
Holmes had a choice to make. She could try to raise funds to keep the company moving, or she could see it wither away. He said that she chose to raise the funds through fraud.
The closing statement from the prosecution on Thursday was a reminder that this trial is about money and mostly rich people's money. The prosecutor referred to the rich people who gave their money to Theranos as victims. The legal system says that the money was manipulated during the time Theranos was the hottest startup in Silicon Valley.
The focus is on the trial. She could get in trouble for misrepresenting what Theranos could do in order to get money out of investors and patients. The tests her company made were not good. She is not in trouble because her company gave incorrect information. She couldn't go to jail for her role in the death of the chief scientist.
She is not in trouble because her company gave incorrect information.
She could have continued to oversee the company and not be facing 20 years in prison. She is staring down incarceration because she lied about her tests to raise money. An honest pitch filled with honest representations to her investors and patients would not have resulted in any revenue.
She didn't make an honest pitch. He told the jury that she should be found guilty of fraud.
The government had to prove that she met the technical, legal requirements for fraud in order to show that she wasn't lying. There is a conspiracy to commit fraud and a fraud. She is accused of conspiring to commit fraud against investors and patients.
To meet the bar for a conspiracy,Holmes had to have been part of an agreement to make false statements for the purpose of getting money that would keep Theranos alive. She had to have known and participated in a plan to get money by making false statements and that the statements would cause someone to spend money. She had to have acted with the intent to cheat.
The jury was walking through all the ways in whichHolmes made misleading statements to investors. He talked about the pharmaceutical company logos she admitted to adding on to the lab reports. She gave investors misleading information about what types of tests could be run on the Theranos machines, and INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals INRDeals He pointed to media interviews where she had given the same answers, and said that she sent articles based on those interviews to investors.
The jury was shown the evidence that he argued means that the misleading information that was given to them was intentional.
The jury was shown the evidence that he presented.
Kevin Downey focused his closing statements on the idea that there was no intent. He will continue that argument Friday morning.
Patients saw the misleading statements given in media interviews, which is one way they were allegedly defrauded. Patients were given bad information about the accuracy of the Theranos tests in advertisements and on the company website, even though the company said there were problems with certain tests.
The reason she did investors was to raise money. Individual tests raised less money than investors. He focused on the patients more than the investors. He didn't refer to the patients who were given bad medical test results as victims.
The prosecution told a story about a company that was running out of money and a CEO who lied to people in order to get them to give them more money. That is not legal. The legal system can get people in trouble. The case is about real people who lost money, and that's what Schenk said at the end of his closing arguments.
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