More than seven years after the first Wall Street Journal story about problems with Theranos’ blood tests, its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, was sentenced to over a decade in prison for defrauding the company’s investors. She had been found guilty on four counts of fraud during a months-long trial where her lawyers argued that she was an inexperienced entrepreneur who hadn’t intended to mislead anyone.
Holmes’ story is, by now, well known. She founded Theranos as a college dropout, raising hundreds of millions of dollars from high-profile investors and courting former high-ranking government officials for her board. Since then, the rapid rise and downfall of Holmes and Theranos has taken on a life of its own, with major podcasts, books and a recent Hulu miniseries.