After the Oddfather, the Oddfounder: Elizabeth Holmes' fraud trial begins

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos - a blood-testing technology company - in 2003, when she was 19. She is facing 12 charges of fraud. (Image: via Wikimedia Commons)

There are cons. And there are psycho-cons who could be characters in a Stephen King thriller. Or who could play mob boss Vincent Gigante, who pretended to be insane for about three decades to throw off authorities about his real position in the crime world.

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, who is on trial this week in San Jose facing 12 charges of fraud, could fit the latter category.

Unchecked ambition can turn into mania. What is just weird to begin with can slip into evil. Logic and values are necessary, as much for the success of a company as a founder’s own sanity. These are some of the thoughts that arise from Holmes’ bizarre saga.

An ambitious woman who specifically wanted to be a billionaire, Holmes founded Theranos in 2003, when she was 19. This wasn’t another social media or e-commerce platform. Theranos did big, important things. They were a blood-testing technology; they could conduct in-depth tests with just a drop of red drawn from a pin-prick. This was much more convenient compared to the traditional needle, where a full vial is dragged out from our veins.

The offering seemed like a game-changer. Together with Holmes’ carefully crafted public persona – black turtlenecks like her idol Steve Jobs, a deliberately Liam Neesoned voice, and an unblinking gaze – it fooled tech and Wall Street lords into opening their wallets. At one point, the company was valued at $9 billion. Holmes appeared on magazine covers and rubbed shoulders with presidents and CEOs.

But it turned out the Theranos story was mostly baloney. Holmes and her compadre and one-time lover, Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, emerged as scamsters. Whether this was their plan all along or they became corrupted along the way is not known.

Theranos’ bluff was called when Tyler Shultz, a Theranos employee and the grandson of former US Secretary of State, and Theranos director George Schultz, turned whistleblower. He outed the truth to Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou.

The fall of the company, and of Holmes and Balwani, was swift. While Holmes is in court this week, Balwani’s trial is scheduled for January 2022.

Holmes became a mother in July. While that may elicit a lighter court verdict, it is not earning her sympathy in the eyes of the public. In fact, it has been said that her motherhood may have been a far-sighted ploy to earn the court’s leniency.

Large-scale sympathy may be a tall order for Holmes, but she continues to trigger curiosity. What kind of person goes to such lengths of deception, faking their voice and manner, day in day out, for so many years?

It is in this context that she is reminiscent of a Stephen King or underworld character. Her actions may not have been as directly macabre, but she did cause widespread financial and psychological damage, some of it to patients due to Theranos’ faulty test results.

Also, Ian Gibbons, the former chief scientist of Theranos, committed suicide, reportedly due to the stress of the job and the company’s culture. When his wife informed the office of his death, she was coldly told to return whatever Theranos material Gibbons possessed. Holmes’ subterfuge, and intimidation of those who doubted her or Theranos – such as Carreyrou – were not unlike a criminal’s.

In King’s Misery, an obsessive nurse, Annie Wilkes, holds her favourite writer hostage in her home, forcing him to crank out a manuscript for her, or else face horrific consequences.

We come to Gigante, who was a real life mob boss. He would shuffle around in a bathrobe on the streets of New Jersey, in an attempt to make authorities believe he was mentally unstable. In The Sopranos, the scenes of Tony fetching the newspaper from the gate of his mansion in a bathrobe were said to be inspired by Gigante, who was nicknamed the Oddfather. In Holmes, she of the unnerving stare and voice modulation, the world discovered the Oddfounder.