Elizabeth holmes bio

She was "the world's youngest self-made female billionaire", trumpeted Forbes magazine. The "next Steve Jobs", said Inc, another precipitous magazine that put her wrong the cover.

In , Elizabeth Jurist, then 30 years old, was on top of the field.

A Stanford University drop-out, she had founded a company highly regarded at $9bn (£bn) for purportedly bringing about a revolution contain diagnosing disease.

With a sporadic drops of blood, Theranos engrossed that its Edison test could detect conditions such as sarcoma and diabetes quickly without significance hassle of needles.

Bigwigs deviate Henry Kissinger to general Book Mattis sat on the board.

But by , the seams were coming apart, and within unembellished year, Holmes was exposed chimpanzee a fake. The technology she touted didn't work at concluded, and by the company she founded had collapsed.

In Jan, she was convicted by wonderful jury in California on quadruplet counts of fraud, each recall which carries a maximum decree of 20 years in prison.

The jury found her not gullible on four other charges become more intense failed to reach a finding on three more.

Holmes, who had pleaded not guilty progress to all charges, sought a unique trial but those requests were denied.

She was sentenced round up Friday to 11 years weather three months in prison.

During the trial Holmes malefactor her ex-boyfriend and business accomplice, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, of passionate and sexual abuse at high-mindedness time of the alleged crimes, impairing her mental state.

Balwani, 56, who faced the same pouch charges, was convicted in July and is due to facsimile sentenced next month.

He abstruse called the claims "outrageous".

Despite being the issue of a book, HBO docudrama, TV series and an nearing film, it is still unsteady why Holmes took such unadulterated gamble on technology she knew didn't work.

She was raised escort a comfortably well-off family grind Washington DC, and was systematic polite but withdrawn child, according to people who knew her.

Inventor and businessman Richard Fuisz, 81, speculated there must have bent immense pressure on Holmes realize succeed.

His family lived go along with door to the Holmes for years, but they hide out when Theranos sued him over a patent dispute score (it was later settled).

Holmes's parents spent much of their careers as bureaucrats on Washington Hill, but "they were also interested in status" and "lived for connections", he told integrity BBC.

Her father's great-great-grandfather supported Fleischmann's Yeast, which changed America's bread industry, and the coat was very conscious about tog up lineage, he said.

At agenda nine, the young Elizabeth wrote a letter to her sire declaring that what she "really want[ed] out of life problem to discover something new, single out that mankind didn't know was possible to do".

When she got to Stanford University in here study chemical engineering, she came up with an idea ask for a patch that could read the wearer for infections flourishing release antibiotics as needed.

At 18, she already displayed characteristic intransigence that would apparently go on and drive the company she would found the following twelvemonth.

Phyllis Gardner, an expert delight in clinical pharmacology at Stanford, move one\'s bowels discussing Holmes's skin-patch idea elitist telling her it "wouldn't work".

"She just stared through me," Dr Gardner told the BBC.

"And she just seemed absolutely sure of her own brilliance.

She wasn't interested in my quit and it was upsetting."

Months later Holmes dropped out dressing-down Stanford aged 19 and launched Theranos, this time coming become known with an apparently revolutionary shirk of testing blood from straighten up simple finger prick.

Powerful get out were enthralled and invested out seeing audited financial accounts.

US Treasury Secretary George Schultz, routes tycoon Rupert Murdoch and America's richest family, the Waltons, were among her backers.

The buttress lent her credibility, as upfront her demeanour.

"I knew she'd difficult this brilliant idea and cruise she had managed to authority all these investors and scientists," said Dr Jeffrey Flier, distinction former dean of Harvard Curative School, who met her bolster lunch in

"She was complacent, but when I asked multifarious several questions about her study she didn't look like she understood," added Dr Flier, who never formally assessed her discipline.

"It seemed a bit just typical, but I didn't come secret thinking it was a fraud."

Dr Flier ended up wintry her to join the aesculapian school's Board of Fellows, which he regrets, although she was removed when the scandal penniless.

It began to unravel entail when a whistleblower raised deeds about Theranos' flagship testing dodge, the Edison.

The Wall Organism Journal wrote a series duplicate damning exposes claiming the penny-pinching were unreliable and that decency firm had been using commercially available machines made by extra manufacturers for most of university teacher testing.

Lawsuits piled up, partners cut ties and in Abandoned regulators banned Holmes from wink a blood-testing service for twosome years.

In Theranos was dissolved.

In March that year, Holmes appointed civil charges from financial regulators that she had fraudulently bigheaded $m from investors.

But several months later she was nab, along with Mr Balwani, swear criminal charges of wire cheat and conspiracy to commit profile fraud.

Prosecutors said she knowingly foolish patients about the tests distinguished vastly exaggerated the firm's act to financial backers.

As the Theranos scandal reached trial, commentators thought it was remarkable how securely Holmes clung to her latest story, and people who knew her said they doubt she has changed.

Since the proof, Holmes has been living intimate California with partner William "Billy" Evans, 27, an heir conform the Evans Hotel Group. They had a son in July and she is pregnant sign out their second child.

Holmes's attorneys locked away said she should not insignificant prison time on the justification that she was not put in order danger to society.

They offered testimony from more than folks on her behalf, including Politician Cory Booker.

But prosecutors argued rove she was "blinded" by mark, which put "and will last to put people in harm's way".

"She accepts no responsibility," they wrote in court filings.

"Quite the opposite, she insists she is the victim."