Key Theranos Whistleblower Unveiled At Trial

A lab director that is in the midst of testifying against Elizabeth Holmes at her trial has revaled themselves to be a key source for the Wall Street Journal’s eventual unraveling of the massive fraud. 

Lab director Adam Rosendorff resigned from the company in 2014 and testified on Tuesday that he later got a phone call from the Journal’s John Carreyrou, whom he spoke with off the record, according to Bloomberg Law. 

“I felt obligated to alert the public. I didn’t quite know how I should do that. But when this opportunity presented itself I took advantage of it,” Rosendorff said at trial.

Following their talk, Carreyrou wrote a series of stories in 2015 that catalyzed scrutiny on Theranos. In 2018, his work was made into a book called “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.”

Rosendorff, in the book is referred to under the pseudonym Alan Beam.

“Adam Rosendorff was my first and most important source. I couldn’t have broken the Theranos story without him. Hats off to his integrity and his courage. He’s one of the heroes of this story,” Carreyrou said.

Rosendorff admitted at trial that he had been talking to “prosecutors and officials at various federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Postal Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation,” according to Bloomberg.

He marks the latest witness in a stream of former Theranos employees that will testify at the trial. He “really bought into the idea” of Theranos when he was hired in 2013, Rosendorff said. “I thought it was going to be the next Apple.”

Months later, he would be sending an email to Holmes labeled “Concerns about the launch”, raising question about Theranos’ new partnership with Walgreens. “I have some medical and operational concerns about our readiness for 9/9,” he wrote. 

He told jurors this week: “I was raising the alarm bells. I felt it was important for Elizabeth to be aware of these issues as the chief executive of the company.”

“Holmes was noticeably shaken, responded nervously and wasn’t her normally composed self” when Rosendorff sat with her one-on-one to discuss the failures of Theranos’ testing, he said.