On November 18^th, Elizabeth Holmes got sentenced to 11 years for fraudulent activity in the US Federal Court. This sentencing followed her conviction from the beginning of the year that had to do with defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. This conviction was because of her false claims that her technology could detect diseases from a drop of blood. The first time that Theranos’s capabilities were questioned was in 2015 in an article by The Wall Street Journal. After that, multiple witnesses spoke out about Holmes misled employees, patients, and shareholders about the progress for the company’s technology.

A student from Hidden Valley says “I think that Elizabeth Holmes was rightfully convicted because Theranos has health technology that can be used on real patients and if she is known to lie about the development of her technology, then she can lie about the safety of the technology. Its overall just not safe for anyone.”

Elizabeth Holmes testified to the jury that during the time that the crimes occurred she was enduring physical and emotional abuse by her ex-boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Her lawyers argued that the physical abuse clouded her judgement during the time of the crimes. These allegations were expected because of the legal filings of physical and emotional abuse surfacing. Despite their breakup, Balwani was convicted of 12 counts of fraud in July. His trial was to be held after Holmes.

Another student from Hidden Valley says, “It was definitely expected that she would bring up her abuse and to a certain extent it can definitely affect judgement but saying that the fraud was because of the abuse is a little over the top and not appropriate”.