SAN JOSE, Calif. — For the past 11 weeks, prosecutors revealed emails from desperate investors. They held up falsified documents side by side with the originals. They called dozens of witnesses who lobbed accusations of deceit and evasiveness.
And on Friday, the person whom prosecutors have been making their case against — Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos — took the stand to defend herself. She faces 11 counts of defrauding investors over Theranos’s technology and business in a case that has been billed as a referendum on Silicon Valley’s start-up culture. She has pleaded not guilty.
tech industry’s hubris and the last decade’s culture of grift — began her testimony by answering a series of questions about Theranos. She delved into her background and how she began the Silicon Valley start-up, which had promised to revolutionize health care by using just a drop of blood from patients to deduce their illnesses.
trial finally began in September, prosecutors called former investors, partners and Theranos employees to testify. Jim Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former defense secretary, who was a Theranos director, took the stand, as did a former Theranos lab director who endured six grueling days of questioning. In one surreal moment, a forensics expert recited text messages between Ms. Holmes and Ramesh Balwani, her boyfriend at the time and business partner at Theranos, who is known as Sunny.
This week, Alan Eisenman, an early investor in Theranos, testified that Ms. Holmes cut him off and threatened him when he asked her for more information about the company. Yet even after that treatment, Mr. Eisenman poured more money into the start-up, believing its seemingly fast-growing business would deliver riches to backers like him.
When asked about his understanding of the value of his Theranos stock today, Mr. Eisenman said: “It’s not an understanding, it’s a conclusion. It’s worth zero.”