Ex-Theranos CEO Holmes Trial to Start in March After Covid Delay

(Bloomberg) -- Former Theranos Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elizabeth Holmes is now scheduled to go on trial in March after an October date had to be scrapped because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, told Holmes, her attorneys and federal prosecutors of the new trial schedule during a hearing Tuesday conducted on Zoom. Jury selection is scheduled to start March 9 with opening statements set for March 16.

Holmes and her former boyfriend, ex-Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, are accused of falsely claiming that the company’s devices could perform a myriad of tests from a single drop of blood, and duping investors and defrauding doctors and patients who trusted the results. Theranos, which attracted the backing of high-profile investors and leading venture capital firms, was valued at $9 billion before unraveling over the alleged fraud.

The judge said he will rule without a hearing on Holmes’s request from July 30 seeking information about the make-up of the grand jury, or juries, that returned two superseding indictments last month, adding additional counts of wire fraud. She said in the request that she may challenge the indictments because of concerns about how the grand jury was selected during the pandemic.

The case is U.S. v. Holmes, 18-cr-00258, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).

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