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Theranos Used Shell Company To Secretly Buy Outside Lab Equipment, Says Report (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the master-of-disguise dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company "allegedly misled company directors" regarding its lab tests and used a shell company to buy commercial lab gear. These are just a few of the new revelations made by the Journal, which also include fake demonstrations for potential investors. The new information came from unsealed depositions by 22 former Theranos employees or members of its board of directors. They were deposed by Partner Fund Management LP, a hedge fund currently suing Theranos in Delaware state court. Theranos is also facing multiple lawsuits in federal court in California and Arizona, among others. The Journal, which did not publish the new filings, quoted former Theranos director Admiral Gary Roughead (Ret.), as saying that he was not aware that the company was using "extensive commercial analyzers" until it was reported in the press. The Journal described the filings as "some of the first substantive details to emerge from several court proceedings against the company, though they include only short excerpts from the depositions."

5 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. I thought women made better CEOs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I thought women made better CEOs: more honest, less greedy, less "old boy network."

    Did the media lie to me?

    1. Re:I thought women made better CEOs by sexconker · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When you put a woman in as your CEO because they're a woman, you're going to have a bad time.
      The same goes for race, religion, sexual identity, whatever. Of course, this also includes straight, white, Christian males, though I suspect I've already offended certain people past the point of no return.

      How about you hire the best person for the job?

      How many Meg Whitmans, Elizabeth Holmeses, and Marissa Mayers are we going to see trotted out to kill companies for the sake of diversity?
      The worst part is that we see all the awful female executives getting pats on the back, accolades, etc., but the ones that are competent like Carly Fiorina (compare her to her successor) or even great (Lisa Su) get almost no fucking recognition.

      Remember when HP mattered? And Yahoo?

  2. Re:How is Holmes not indicted yet? by udachny · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Let's see, how about all these other people (from Wikipedia):

    former Secretary of State George Shultz, William Perry (former Secretary of Defense), Henry Kissinger (former Secretary of State), Sam Nunn (former U.S. Senator), Bill Frist (former U.S. Senator and heart-transplant surgeon), Gary Roughead (Admiral, USN, retired), James Mattis (General, USMC), Richard Kovacevich (former Wells Fargo Chairman and CEO) and Riley Bechtel (chairman of the board and former CEO at Bechtel Group). ...
    The board included past presidents or board members of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry such as Susan A. Evans, William Foege, former director U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, David Helfet, director of the Orthopedic Trauma Service at the Hospital for Special Surgery and professors, Ann M. Gronowski, Larry J. Kricka, Jack Ladenson, Andy O. Miller and Steven Spitalnik.

    Fabrizio Bonanni (former executive vice president of Amgen), Richard Kovacevich and William Foege, (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), who would help to publicly introduce its technologies....

    there were many people involved there, people with government ties. This con was beautifully done, all the way till the inevitable failure. It may be not so easy just to pin everything on Holmes. The best con men (and women) are those, who are true believers in their own con, I wonder if she was (is) a true believer, did she con everybody else or also herself?

    --
    MY OTHER COMMENTS
  3. We need a new mod label: Taboo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Modded -1 because it's much easier to suppress the question than to answer it.

  4. Re:How is Holmes not indicted yet? by tomhath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's tempting to think she really believed the technology was almost working, that they just needed a little more time and money to iron out the kinks. But what makes me suspect she was a fraud from early on was her attempt to build a mystique around herself - the black turtleneck, bleached blond hair, all the VIPs she had on the board - it all reeks of snake oil.