Elizabeth Holmes Loses Last Ditch Bid To Have Criminal Charges Against Her Thrown Out

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes lost her most recent challenge to throw out the criminal charges against her this week. She had been seeking dismissal of “various counts” of the charges against her, stemming from the allegations that she engaged in a massive fraud while running Theranos.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California denied Holmes’ motions in an order issued Tuesday.

The judge did, however, re-iterate a previous ruling that physicians were not victims of the alleged fraud by Holmes, according to Bloomberg Law. The judge said he expects prosecutors not to argue that Holmes, or her ex-boyfriend Sunny Balwani, should be convicted of wire fraud based on any scheme to defraud doctors. 

Recall, back in February, we noted that the same judge had dropped several charges against Holmes, but had allowed wire fraud charges to stand. 

The court ruled that since the tests were paid by customers’ medical insurance companies, that the patients were not deprived of any money or property in using Theranos’ blood testing services. The court also found back in February that there was “no evidence” to show that Holmes and Balwani directed doctors to make misrepresentations to their patients. 

The original indictment alleges that Holmes and Balwani knew that Theranos was not capable of consistently producing accurate results, yet they encouraged doctors and patients to use their tests regardless. They were both indicted in June of 2018 on 11 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud. 

Recall, at the beginning of 2020, we had also noted that Holmes literally phoned in her defense in an Arizona fraud lawsuit after her civil lawyers quit due to non-payment. 

Holmes still maintains a team of “high caliber” attorneys for her criminal case in San Jose federal court.