And Just Like That… Elizabeth Holmes Is a Felon

Holmes was found guilty on four charges of defrauding investors

Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes is led into a waiting car by her partner Billy Evans (L) outside the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building on November 23, 2021 in San Jose, California. Holmes is facing charges of conspiracy and wire fraud for allegedly engaging in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors with the Theranos blood testing lab services. (Photo by Ethan Swope/Getty Images)

Silicon Valley has a God complex issue. Those in precarious positions of power — their names preceded by three-letter acronyms — seem to maintain liquidated spines that allow them to bend over and under rules and regulations. Charisma only makes these motions even easier, less taxing.

Elizabeth Holmes — the now-disgraced CEO and founder of Theranos, a biomedical startup founded in 2003 that promised to revolutionize blood testing and early disease detection — epitomized all the aforementioned beliefs. And her fall from grace (which made for a spectacular 15-week trial inside a San Jose courthouse) now sits as a rare reminder that CEOs and founders who evade morality and ethical procedures could well pay for their blunders later down the road.

On Monday, Judge Edward Davila and a jury made up of eight men and four women threw the metaphorical book at Holmes’ past flounderings running Theranos; the 37-year-old Stanford dropout was found guilty on…