Holmes trial jury to deliberate for day four| Latest News Headlines

SAN JOSE, Calif .– Jurors are expected to begin a fourth day of deliberations on Monday in the fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos.

Ms Holmes, 37, faces 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for lying about Theranos technology while researching investments and business for her start-up -up. If found guilty, she faces up to 20 years in prison on each count of wire fraud.

A jury of eight men and four women deliberated Monday, Tuesday and Thursday last week without reaching a verdict.

On Thursday, they asked to hear tapes of a call Ms Holmes had with investors, in which she allegedly made misleading statements about Theranos’ partnerships with drug companies and the military.

The jurors’ deliberations follow a nearly four-month trial that is billed as a referendum on the worst excesses of Silicon Valley start-up culture. Before the collapse of Theranos, Ms. Holmes was a very famous founder. She dropped out of Stanford University at age 19 to focus on her business and spent the next decade raising nearly $ 1 billion from investors.

In 2015, Theranos began to crumble after a Wall Street Journal investigation found the company had relied on off-the-shelf machines to perform many of its blood tests, rather than on its own devices. so-called revolutionaries. Theranos closed in 2018, the same year Ms Holmes was charged.

During the trial, federal prosecutors attempted to prove that Ms Holmes intentionally deceived investors, patients and business partners by falsifying validation reports, faking protests and misrepresenting Theranos to the media and the public.

“She chose fraud over business failure,” Jeffrey Schenk, a deputy US lawyer, said during government argument.

Ms Holmes, who took a stand for seven days in her own defense, tried to portray herself as a well-meaning entrepreneur who believed in her own claims and was misled by those around her.

“She believed she was building technology that would change the world,” said Kevin Downey, Ms. Holmes’ attorney.