Comment by nickstinemates
21 hours ago
> But the thing that often gets lost in the retelling of her story is that Holmes was actually acquitted of all four charges related to defrauding patients. She’s in prison because a jury found that she knowingly misled investors who poured more than $700 million into the startup.
trying to minimize fraud? what a weird article.
For context for others, Holmes was acquitted of defrauding patients. A juror stated that she was acquitted because Holmes didn't directly interact with the patients. On the other hand, she did directly interact with investors, so the evidence was much clearer.
Separately, Theranos' COO and Holmes' boyfriend at the time was convicted by a separate jury for defrauding patients. Theranos also settled multiple lawsuits for ~$50M and declared bankruptcy soon after.
Acquitted on a legal technicality, then, not in the court of accountability and consequences.
Also, just because the jury didn't think there was enough evidence to convict her of defrauding patients (beyond reasonable doubt), doesn't mean she was innocent.
It actually does. You can judge her, but she is not guilty. The more we as a society decide the justice system is just an arbitrary way of deciding who gets punished and not _the_ way of deciding if a person is or is not a criminal the more we slide towards oblivion.
If a person is found not guilty, they are not guilty. To argue otherwise is to undermine the core institution of western civilization.
Important to note that western civilization is fundamentally ok with the knowledge that the statement issued by a jury or judge does not actually define whether a person is morally, factually or colloquially “innocent”. Disputes may be addressed c/o OJ Simpson and the Central Park 5.
Not guilty doesn't mean innocent. It means "guilt could not be proven", it does not mean "innocence was proven".
Seriously, this is why OJ was found liable for the murder of his wife in a civil case, as they're judged on the balance of probabilities.
And it's why people who have served time, then had a retrial ordered and then found not guilty, can be denied compensation, because decisions on compensation are also done on the balance of probabilities.
So yeah, "not guilty" != "innocent".
The finding is ‘not guilty’, rather than innocent. It does not mean the accused is innocent. It means they could not be proven guilty.
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I mostly agree with the idea, but to accept this as an absolute implies our justice system is infallible
there is no way to argue that without also believing that the millions of people the state has tossed into prison are all guilty, which is really not something that I can do.
Not guilty != innocent.
No. To argue what you argue is to play pretend stupid.
Court of law with its ability imprison people must have higher standard for the "guilty" decision. That makes it possible for rich guilty people to not be judged guilty.
You are allowed and expexted to use own brain. You can consider people guilty.
What gets lost more is that Balwani was convicted of defrauding patients, so it's not even like Theranos was absolved of those charges. The kicker is that the CEO and co-founder of a company that has been established to willfully defraud patients somehow managed to escape conviction.
Indeed. While she's not on the leaderboard of worst humans ever, she's still up there. Any whitewashing of her reputation is bogus.
This point is also clearly made in the film. Sounds like the article has nothing to say and just wants to leech off the success and attention of the doc.
I mean in do you really have a lot of sympathy for the oligarchic tax advantaged zombie family hedge funds that made a bet and lost?
They didn't do their diligence and do kinda deserve to lose their money.
Holmes and Theranos leadership did more than defraud investors. They knowingly ran unreliable tests on actual patients. People were told they were miscarrying when they weren't, or that they had HIV when they didn't. And they drove an employee, Ian Gibbons, to suicide, then threatened his widow with a lawsuit when she talked to reporters about it.
Important to note she was found not guilty of this charge.
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As others have noted her current prison time is for fraud against Walton, Ellison, Murdoch etc - the same family funds funneling money to the Trump-klepto-universe.
They are the ones who propped up the company without any independent testing and enabled the bad tests and are ruining our society with their dumb money.
That’s true but not relevant. I have absolutely no sympathy for the rubes who thought FTX was a good place to put their money, but that doesn’t make the fraud any more OK.
This is conflating users and investors. Investors have the obligation of diligence and it's clear here (and with FTX) they didn't. If they did, neither would be happened.
Also it's exactly the opposite, scamming the public is fine - United healthcare can scam the government out of billions, no one goes to jail, minor fees but it's +ROI for them.
Murdoch's lose an investment after YOLO-ing a few hundred mil and no diligence and they get the feds to give jail time?
The people that invested their money did not make these decisions. The people running the fund did. You're victim blaming. Most people don't get a very wide choice where their money goes outside the couple of options the fund managers present. I'd also venture most people do not even look at what stocks are in the fund. They'll look at the past earnings and check the box.
This is family funds - Murdoch, Walton, Ellison. You think they shouldn't be responsible for doing due diligence? The device didn't work. They could've independently verified that at any point.
If there were users that were given bad tests, that was due to these investors not doing their jobs.