Elizabeth Holmes Owns Up to Pharma Forgeries, Voicing Regret to Jury
Elizabeth Holmes Owns Up to Pharma Forgeries, Voicing Regret to Jury
(Bloomberg) -- Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes testified at her criminal fraud trial that she made a mistake in deciding to use the logos of pharmaceutical giants without permission on reports to prospective investors conveying support by the companies for her blood-testing startup.
Prosecutors have alleged that when Pfizer Inc. and Schering-Plough Corp. declined to endorse Theranos machines, Holmes resorted to misappropriating the letterhead logos of those companies and issuing fabricated reports. Investors have testified that the purported endorsements of pharmaceutical companies were important in their decision to buy Theranos shares.
“This work was done in partnership with those companies and I was trying to convey that,” Holmes said while being questioned by her attorney Tuesday in a San Jose, California, federal courtroom. While that was her intention in using the logos on the reports, “I wish I’d done it differently,” she said.
The government has laid out its case over the previous 10 weeks with witnesses who depicted Holmes as deeply deceptive. In her initial hour-long testimony Friday, the 37-year-old discussed the youth and idealism required to get Theranos started. Yesterday she spent hours delving into contracts with giant pharmaceutical companies and her belief that the the company’s machines could run a full range of blood tests. Theranos collapsed in 2018.
On Tuesday, she told jurors how she was focused on pushing hard to expand her business in 2010, when she was hiring more scientists and pitching Theranos testing devices to be used in pharmacy chains.
“Every pharmacy company that we knew of,” Holmes said. “We focused on retail pharmacies,” including Target, CVS, Walmart, Duane Reed, Safeway and Walgreens. “Some of them thought we were too early, that we were too young as a company,” Holmes said. “Some of them didn’t want to pursue it.”
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