Elizabeth Holmes: Theranos founder convicted of fraud DEEP VOICE

[bubblesbubbles11]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59734254

Am I being unreasonable to think that anyone who listened to Elizabeth Holmes's very deep voice when she did public speaking (or even whilst in her business operations) should surely have thought something was not right, well before any scandal?

It is so bizarre to listen to.

@Mochudubh

I didn't know anything about this till I saw the news but I thought her voice didn't fit. It's as though her face is on 45 but her voice on 33 (for those of us old enough to get the reference).

Yes exactly. I thought her speech was too deliberately slow and voice obviously false. I actually thought it sounded dubbed on some of those videos.

@SlowBoiledFrog

Let's just say the professor saw straight through her from day one.

So why didn't the shareholders, the investors (some very well known people) the 800 people she employed, the patients etc. Greed for the former? Desperation for the latter? It is fascinating

The shareholders, investors, employees, and the poor patieants all needed it to be a success - they too much to lose.

@tttigress EH legal team tried to run an argument at trial based on investors’ lack of due diligence but the judge wouldn’t allow it, arguing that the investors’ mistakes didn’t make her statements any more or less fraudulent at the time they were made. Which I guess is true. But I’m sure this whole situation will have made investors in tech start ups a whole lot more fastidious!

The dropout podcast is WMAZING

Thanks to this thread - I enjoyed The DropOut -- now working thru the 'Trial' edition which has even more detail about the specific lies she told investors (like pretending she had endorsements from Pfizer, etc)

She was the most gifted Bullshitter in an Industry of Bullshitters. But what really shocked me is that how she treated her staff, that must be normal in their industry. No one interviewed expressed indignation that they were treated so badly. It's literally normalised, just what happens to staff in a frothing sea of over-funded over-indebted entitled-CEO Bullshitter companies. Big eye-opening.

Oh, and she & Sonny had a "nice Boss Mean Boss" routine going. She was the pleasant untainted visionary face & he did the shouting & nasty stuff. Right teamwork those 2.

Yes, the Dropout podcast is v interesting.

In the latest episide a male interviewee, an investment person I think (not affected by the fraud) said that although he agreed Elizabeth Holmes committed the crimes, a very high number of men indeed had done similar and NOT been taken to trial.

Agree that the voice was a ‘red flag’!

For those wondering why the fake voice is relevant - it is yet another bit of evidence about how duplicitous she was. Not the genuine article.

The woman’s obviously very clever but a liar, through and through. The web of deceit she wove was absolutely astounding. My MIL says “a good liar needs a good memory” and she had that too, to keep this going for so long.

@JesusInTheCabbageVan

Did she say why she did that?

I'm honestly only on this thread for the weirdness.

Out of interest, is Jesus still in the Cabbage Van? Ocado vans are so common place these days that I hardly notice what's on the side of the vehicle. Sorry to side track post OP

You know, I never even heard her voice. I didn’t even know she was the head of the company at the beginning. In the beginning, I just kept hearing about it from people who were so hopeful that what she claimed her company was making (a blood test that could “do it all” with just a few drops of blood) would help me, and it’s true, it would have made my life a lot better. When you have a disease that attacks your veins, and you watch them get worse every year, and lab techs remember you as the “worst veins ever” when you haven’t even been to their lab in a YEAR, a promise of a blood test that would take just a few drops sounded like a miracle.

But it was all a lie, my veins have gotten even worse, and unless I have the best of the best of the best, it can take 45 minutes and still take four tries to get a vein. And still be a failure. I know she’s been convicted of fraud, but that’s because she cost people money. There’s not really any conviction for “lost hope” in particular. It was a shit thing of her to do to disabled people, cancer patients, sick children who fear tests - all patients in this needle-hating boat.

Yes, the media information and public statements did give the impression the blood tests with a single drop had arrived and would be available in the US.

In the trial, a woman gave evidence with a history of miscarriage who’d had an inaccurate HSG test in early pregnancy and was told she’d have another mc (she had a healthy baby, having gone through unnecessary distress).

The ideas that Elizabeth Holmes and her partner Sunny Balwani sold had powerful appeal. But they constantly made untrue statements about their science and technology being ready.

A lot of the company board were older men who claim to have been impressed by Ms Holmes’ ‘charisma’. Seems far more likely that she was a sexually attractive 19 year old! With an appealing ‘pitch’.

Everything about her was a con and she got on by selling into peoples greed.

This is just about the financial con. Nothing about the lives she ruined.

A lot of the company board were older men who claim to have been impressed by Ms Holmes’ ‘charisma’. Seems far more likely that she was a sexually attractive 19 year old! With an appealing ‘pitch’. honestly this is probably the only logical explanation, these are not novice men. Yet they poured millions and millions into her company, Warren buffet made a remark about the board members being all former presidential candidates and former Secretaries of State . people with no background in biotech.
It’s one of the most baffling fraud stories I’ve ever read.

I've heard about the deep voice thing - to me it seems likely that it was part of her ' trust me' persona, like the all- black clothes. It was androgynous, everyone could trust her ,she always presented as the commander of your future. And people fell for it.

@queenofarles it has been commented that her funding rounds were aimed at “old money” family trusts not the usual suspects for funding new tech startups. The implication being that the latter would at the very least ask some searching questions that they would prefer not to answer!

It could be that too VCA , but to think that big names like Walton family with board members and advisers not do their research is quite strange. There must have been hundreds of Silicon Valley startups that sounded great in theory but failed. Not everything takes off.
It sounded very much like the l, libertine hoax.

But the strangest thing was her claims that the Edison can detect cancer several years before it starts, and that John Hopkins are backing her claims , but when someone reached out to them they denied any collaboration with Theranos.
That’s a very reckless claim to make.

🤣🤣🤣