Jurors presiding over the case of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes are now back to the courtroom on Thursday in order to listen to listen again to audio recordings that captures the Steve Job wannabe’s brash promises about vaunted blood-testing tech that is meant to change the medical industry forever.
The recordings which dates as far back a Dec. 2013 were presented to prospective investors where the former CEO bragged about partnerships with well-established pharmaceutical companies .
However, she was unaware of the fact that she was being recorded.
This wouldn’t be the first time that the jurors will be listening to the recordings as a previous one happened back in late October and a few excerpts inmclosing arguments were also played this past week.
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The jurors sent a note before afternoon where they’d demanded to review the recordings.
This in turn prompted the U.S. District Judge Edward Davila to bring the eight men and four women of the jury back to the courtroom for the first time after being ushered out at the end of last week to commence deliberations.
Holmes also returned to the courtroom where she watched jurrs and their reactions to the recordings from her position in the courtroom.
According to a report, she was said to have attempted an eye contact with the jurors as they walked out of the courtroom following the audio replay but none appeared to look her way.
Just as she often brag on stage, she talked about how Theranos would “change the reality of lab testing” and bring down health costs so dramatically that it would save Medicaid and Medicare about $150 billion over a decade.
But she didn’t say how long that would take to happen.
She also promised that a deal involving her company Theranos was on the verge of deploying its blood-testing technology in Walgreens pharmacies.
“The question now is how fast do we scale?” Holmes told the group of investors on the conference call. “The fact that we will scale is a given.”
However, Walgreens only used Theranos technology in about 40 of its stores mostly in Arizona before opting out of the idea due to concerns that the blood tests were wildly unreliable.
The main crime Elizabeth Holmes has allegedly committed is the fact that she allegedly lied to investors and the general public about her technology and the recordings could in fact implicate her more.
By the time the recordings were made, a decade after she founded Theranos, Holmes estimated that the company was worth about $7 billion.
By mid-2014, Theranos was valued at $9 billion, with half of that that paper wealth owned by Holmes, the company’s controlling shareholder.
Until 2015 and 2016 when the empire came crashing down over a series of articles published in The Wall Street Journal as well as regulatory audits all of which exposed serious flaws in the Theranos technology.
Many medical experts were always skeptical about the fact that there is a technology as that time that can detect numerous things about someone with just the drop of a blood.
Even though the proposition was great as it would reduce the amount of tests to be made by lab researchers as well as the amount of blood that will be drawn from the individual, the fact that Theranos was in fact using the traditional methods and diluting people’s blood thereby giving fake and unreliable results made the company really dangerous.
Holmes will face up to 20 years in prison if the jury finds her guilty. The jury left Thursday without reaching a verdict and are scheduled to resume deliberations Monday.
