{"id":1447,"date":"2018-10-25T05:50:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T05:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1447"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:36:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T16:36:46","slug":"latest-read-bad-blood-about-the-great-theranoselizabeth-holmes-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=1447","title":{"rendered":"Latest Read: “Bad Blood” about the great Theranos\/Elizabeth Holmes fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bad <\/a>\"Elizabeth<\/a>
<\/a><\/p>\n

One of my clients put me on to this book. What a story – on Amazon it has a 90% five star rating. A con and fraud as big as Enron<\/a> or Madoff<\/a>. A pulled off by a young – 19 years old when she started in 2003 – Stamford dropout.<\/p>\n

The first two thirds tells how Elizabeth Holmes built a house of cards on her dream of developing a mini desktop "lab" that could carry out hundreds of blood tests, providing  a huge leap forward for health and medicine, while making her Silicon Valley's first women billionaire. Her idol (she always wore a black top and developed a deep, baritone voice) was Steve Jobs.  It tells how she raised $900 million (!) and put a whole slew of major American players on her "Board of Directors" (none of whom knew anything about medicine) while she and her boyfriend ruthlessly drove her staff. One of her lead scientists actually took his own life.<\/p>\n

The rest of the book tells how the author, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou<\/a>, uncovered the fraud. Of course he was helped by numerous people along the way. His initial article came out on October 15, 2015 – "Hot Startup Theranos Has Struggled With Its Blood-Test Technology"<\/a><\/cite><\/span> – and it was downhill from there for Holmes, here boyfriend Sunny Balwani<\/a>, and Theranos<\/a>. In 2015 Forbes listed Elizabeth Holmes net worth as $4.5 billion. In 2016 Forbes listed it as zero<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The book is fantastically well-written and the movie will have Jennifer Lawrence as Elizabeth Holmes.  Below are links to three youtube videos which give you a taste for the story.<\/p>\n

Here is an interview with Holmes the night the initial WSJ article came out. In hindsight, virtually everything she says here is a lie.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/rGfaJZAdfNE<\/a><\/p>\n

And here is an 11 minute interview with author John Carreyrou on CBS.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/WOi8-tM1gvQ<\/a><\/p>\n

And three minutes with whistle blower grandson of George Schultz on 60 Minutes<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/Wk5Q6cTJ2yY<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my clients put me on to this book. What a story – on Amazon it has a 90% five star rating. A con and fraud as big as Enron or Madoff. A pulled off by a young – 19 years old when she started in 2003 – Stamford dropout. The first two thirds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7701,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions\/7701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}