Epilogue

Dated May 21, 2018; last modified on Sun, 14 Mar 2021

March 14, 2018: SEC charges Theranos, Homes and Balwani with conducting “an elaborate, years-long fraud”. To resolve SEC’s civil charges, Elizabeth was forced to relinquish her voting control, give back a big chunk of stock, pay a $500k penalty and not be an officer/director in a public company for 10 years.

Sunny didn’t join Theranos until late 2009. Elizabeth had already been misleading pharmaceutical companies for years about the readiness of her tech.

In Dec 2013, she forced a resolution granting 100 votes to every share she owned, giving her 99.7% of the voting rights.

Granted, she had a vision that she genuinely believed in and threw herself into realizing. But in her all-consuming quest to be the second coming of Steve Jobs amid the gold rush of the “unicorn” boom, there came a point when she stopped listening to sound advice and began to cut corners.