Theranos: The Most Evil Business In The World (PART 2)

[Music] do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing about the truth this video is part two of the theranose miniseries if you haven't yet seen part one you can watch it by clicking here or using the link in the description below after the deal with walgreens and safeway was announced elizabeth holmes started appearing all over the news forbes cnbc cnn fox business pretty much everyone wanted to cover her story she became a celebrity which she thoroughly enjoyed of course the media lapped up this narrative of a young woman thriving in the

male dominated tech industry and becoming the first female tech billionaire they compared her story with other young college dropouts like mark zuckerberg but what they failed to acknowledge is that coding is something you can learn in your own time dropping out of a chemical engineering degree after just a few months doesn't qualify you to go and start a revolutionary medical company but the media and investors all wanted so desperately to believe this incredible story of a young college dropout saving lives that they initially didn't look as closely as they should have because in reality elizabeth

real talent wasn't in medicine or business her real gift was manipulating others for example she did a ted talk where she spoke passionately about losing her uncle to cancer and how heartbroken she'd been and how she wanted to build their notes so people didn't lose loved ones too soon like she had however it was later found she hadn't even been close to her uncle and she just used his death as part of her act she repeated this story over and over milking his death to exploit people's emotions and create a better story as well as

being a great storyteller elizabeth was a great networker she surrounded herself with powerful older men who believed in her and even managed to embed herself into some very high profile political circles which further enhanced her reputation and gave her more legitimacy she aligned herself with very powerful older men who seem to succumb to a certain charm this is how she was able to get such high profile board members including henry kissinger and former u.s secretary of defense james mattis and having such high profile names on the board meant nobody really doubted the company of course

what they failed to notice is that none of the board members elizabeth hyatt had even a basic knowledge of blood science but it was almost like everyone thought well everyone else can't be wrong about her so she must be genuine and so they bought into her lies as well it was a classic example of herd mentality for example there have been studies where people get shown three lines and asked which is longer when alone people almost always get it right but when done in a group with paid actors who deliberately say the wrong answer the

test subject often says the wrong answer too they go along with what everyone else is saying and ignore their own doubts and elizabeth exploited this fact the more high-profile people that invested in theranos the less anyone questioned anything and future investors did less due diligence than normal because they just trusted that the previous investors had done proper due diligence themselves but really they'd just been charmed by elizabeth and brought into her lies because they wanted it to be true of course some investors did at least ask to see some proof the technology worked but elizabeth

was prepared for that firstly she put the pfizer logo on several therino's documents and presentations implying pfizer had in some way approved the technology which of course they hadn't she also had a report from the john hopkins medical school which he claimed endorsed theranos technology but again in reality it was simply a two-page report confirming the medical school had seen the device the report said nothing about them actually verifying the results themselves but to an untrained eye the documents elizabeth produced was enough to seem genuine but stop right there here's where things get really fascinating

when people talk about elizabeth holmes they often say it's a story of a scammer but really this is a story of self-delusion you see what's most interesting about all of this is elizabeth truly seemed to think in the end it would all work out in her mind all the lies she told wouldn't matter because eventually the theranose machine would do everything she said it could one clear example of this is that literally the night before the theranos website went live elizabeth suddenly requested a huge list of changes they had to remove loads of information from

the site such as the claim that therons was fda approved or that the machine could do 800 tests and countless other both claims she'd initially made that weren't true the reason is simple up until the night the website was shoot to go live elizabeth seemed to genuinely think all those wild claims she'd made would have come true but they hadn't it was the same with the walgreens and safeway deals she kept stalling for time because she felt certain that eventually the technology would catch up to the claims that she'd made but they never did it

was the epitome of fake it till you make it and some have suggested that even to this day elizabeth doesn't think she did anything wrong she just thinks she didn't have enough time take the first step in faith you don't have to see the whole staircase just take the first step elizabeth also once said that the minute you have a backup plan you've admitted you're not going to succeed it was like she was just adamant it would work out and refused to believe otherwise whilst that's clearly absurd it's not surprising theranose was being run in

silicon valley a place of innovation where young entrepreneurs believed they could achieve almost anything using new technology it was also home to elizabeth hero steve jobs who dropped out of college to start his business just like her and elizabeth began to see herself as the next steve jobs she was obsessed with him she began to act like him and dress like him with the same black turtleneck the media picked up on this and started calling her the female steve jobs which she loved her idolization of steve jobs was so strong that elizabeth actually hired former

apple employees who'd worked with him including the exact same marketing firm apple had used she even wanted to schedule their meetings on wednesdays because that's the same day steve jobs met with them she also said theranose's blood testing system would be the ipod of healthcare unfortunately as a result of this she fixated on arbitrary style requirements like making the device smaller and smaller which made the scientist's job even more difficult than it already was steve jobs was also notorious for giving his employees unrealistic deadlines and it seemed elizabeth was clearly operating on a similar principle

but when reality never caught up to her expectations she began to lie it started with little white lies to investors like cherry-picking certain stats or misleading them with vague claims for example she'd tell people hundreds of thousands of tests have been performed on the edison machine but selectively didn't mention that most of those tests hadn't been successful but as the years passed and the machine still wasn't working as it should things snowballed out of control and the lies and secrets got bigger and bigger until eventually she found herself in a situation where they were carrying

out fake dangerous blood tests on the general public all whilst giving completely made-up revenue numbers to investors and doing interviews claiming she'd invented a revolutionary new device and as if she hadn't lied enough already it soon began to seem that even her voice was fake she even put on a fake voice when she was doing business employees noticed that when she got excited or drunk her unusually deep voice suddenly changed to a much higher pitch there are even clips where you can hear a briefly fall out of character we're pretty excited about in the context

of the ability to integrate multiple methods onto a single platform for the first time we know there's a lot of questions about the past and and the lies just kept coming like when joe biden visited theranos they created a fake lab to show him that they claimed was fully automated and yet it didn't work at all it was all for show but biden had no idea and he described it as the laboratory of the future and described elizabeth as inspiring unless she got even yet more perceived credibility and so for a while it really seemed

like elizabeth was going to get away with all of this fraud she was made the u.s ambassador for global entrepreneurship and added to the board of fellows at harvard medical school she was behaving like a villain yet being portrayed as a hero and she continued to believe her own hype she did endless interviews and speeches and appeared on the cover of countless magazines she even had her office redesigned to look like the president's oval office complete with bulletproof glass what's really interesting though is that when steve jobs announced the first ever iphone at a live

event that didn't work properly either it kept crashing and so he had to keep swapping to different prototypes during the demo and pretend that it was all going to plan it seems elizabeth was essentially trying to do the same thing pretend everything works great and eventually the science would catch up to her claims except it never did and there's a gigantic difference between pretending our phone works better than it really does claiming our medical device works better than it really does elizabeth knowingly allowed incorrect test results to be sent to patients in order to keep

up the facade she put lives at risk for her own self-interests as one former theranos employee put up theranos was like trying to build a bus while you're driving the bus eventually someone is going to get killed but before we get to the next chapter i want to tell you about our awesome sponsor magic spoon imagine a cereal that has zero grams of sugar only 140 calories per serving and yet actually tastes really good what you'd be imagining is magic spoon for me personally i've been working non-stop on this channel lately i'm you're that involved

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click the link in the description below or simply go to magicspoon.commagnates to get five dollars off any order after you've done that let's get back to the story [Music] not everyone believed elizabeth's hype in fact as part of the deal theron has made with walgreens a man named kevin hunter had been hired to carry out due diligence and he never trusted elizabeth at all she was always full of excuses about everything and when he specifically asked if they could compare data from a blood test on a theranose machine with data from a commercial lab elizabeth

became extremely defensive and then quickly changed the subject kevin like several other employees at walgreens said something seemed wrong but the executives at the top of the company were impressed by elizabeth and fully bought into her claims they figured theranos was backed by such high profile investors how could it possibly not be real it also didn't help that walgreens had extreme fomo they really didn't want to miss out on such a potentially lucrative deal especially because elizabeth hinted she'd work with one of their competitors instead if they pulled out the other problem was that even

though some people did have doubts about elizabeth because theranos kept everything so secret nobody really had any proof that anything illegal was happening the only people who did have proof were the employees who worked there or those who had been fired or quit but all of them were under incredibly strict non-disclosure agreements and being threatened with very serious legal action if they said anything negative about the company of course many wanted to speak out even back in 2012 there was an employee who posted on reddit about a biotech organization based on lies and fear for

obvious reasons they couldn't specifically name theranos but they go on to talk about how the ceo was training everyone to lie to them but like many other theranos employees they were relatively inexperienced and genuinely didn't know if some of the behavior at theranos was normal which is exactly what theranos wanted and whenever people did say no to elizabeth or tell her something wasn't possible she'd say they were disloyal and weren't seeing the vision or thinking big enough that's also why elizabeth hired her brother and his friends and promoted them to positions much higher than more

qualified people because she valued blind loyalty above qualifications but then one day everything changed a reporter at the wall street journal named john kariru received an anonymous tip that therons was lying about well everything this was the beginning of jon's investigation into theranos and the beginning of the end for elizabeth john managed to track down several ex-theranos employees who were understandably nervous about talking to him and breaking their ndas but thankfully many of them knew they needed to speak out about what theranos was doing and so they told him what they knew john also found

doctors who'd used theranos and they confirmed they'd received unusual test results soon jon started to piece the whole story together and began to realize how deep elizabeth's lies went but elizabeth knew that john was investigating things because theranos had hired private investigators to stalk ex-employees they suspected of leaking information when elizabeth realized jon was writing an article about theranose that would be published in the wall street journal she begged rupert murdoch to kill the story because his company owned the paper but he said he wouldn't get involved so instead theronos tried to intimidate all of

john's sources he'd spoken to in order to get them to retract their statements you can imagine that if you're being threatened with huge lawsuits it would be tempting to sign a document and make it all go away but in particular two young theranos employees tyler schultz and erica chung deserve a huge amount of credit here both of them were instrumental in helping john piece everything together and get the truth out despite the fact they were putting themselves at huge personal risk by doing so both of them were under constant surveillance from theranos with private investigators

following them everywhere along with extreme ongoing threats and bullying from theranos's law firm tyler's parents thought they might have to sell their house to try and cover the legal fees they'd be facing the threats constantly got scarier and more extreme saying the dragged tyler's family's name through the mud because clearly elizabeth would stop at nothing to stop this article coming out elizabeth tells me that you've been speaking that you've been giving trade secrets away to the wall street journal and you know if this story gets published that you know essentially your career will be ruined

but there's a one-page confidentiality agreement you can sign to just make it all go away but despite theranos's brutal intimidation tactics the whistleblowers helped jon understand the dark truth of theranos and in 2015 he published a scathing expose detailing everything including how theranose had been using mainstream commercial machines for blood tests because their own machines were nowhere near capable of doing the things elizabeth had claimed of course elizabeth immediately denied everything and fought back she tried to dismiss it by saying the sources were simply disgruntled ex-employees and competitors who couldn't be trusted but the damage

was done the article had finally got people asking more questions about theranos before long the regulators did a surprise inspection of the theranos lab and soon realized the extent of the fraud and lies that had taken place the regulators published a report that said theranose was likely to cause serious injury or harm or death the regulators found that if you ran the same test on the edison machine twice it would often give you two totally different results the machines also failed around a third of quality control checks and results were up to 146 percent different

to conventional machines for example their syphilis test was only 65 accurate so 35 out of 100 people got the wrong diagnosis they also found that people in the labs at theranos had been ordered to simply disregard any results that looked unusual the report was damning and it was finally clear to the world thereons was a gigantic fraud a 9 billion company built on lies at deception and secrets elizabeth's house of cards was finally collapsing by 2018 theranos was fully dissolved and elizabeth was indicted for defrauding investors and patients holmes pled not guilty on all counts

investors also filed million-dollar lawsuits and yet somehow elizabeth still tried to claim she'd done nothing wrong i didn't realize until the inspection that these types of issues were in place so until the government told you that you were really out of compliance you didn't know yeah the trial was delayed several times firstly because of the pandemic then again because elizabeth was pregnant in fact some have wondered if she deliberately got pregnant to delay the trial and try to garner sympathy whilst normally i think that was just wild speculation given her track record it wouldn't be

surprising at all but in the meantime elizabeth broke up with sunny and tried to pin all the blame on him paparazzi saw her looking happy with her new boyfriend billy evans a wealthy heir to a luxury hotel chain she was living on a very wealthy estate happily continuing her life as if nothing had happened and showing no remorse the trial finally began in 2021 and the jurors essentially had to determine whether elizabeth was a struggling entrepreneur buying time to fix her product in good faith or whether she was intentionally trying to commit fraud the courts

listened to testimonies from former employees they heard about how elizabeth had faked product demos wildly exaggerated claims and even lied about a contract with the us military to try and make the company seem more legitimate when it was elizabeth's turn to take the stand she tried to blame everyone but herself including the theronus board and employees but the person she blamed the most was her former partner sunny who she said controlled her through teary eyes elizabeth also accused sonny of abusing her and said that the mental distress he caused her contributed to her poor judgment

one thing is for sure their relationship was extremely odd the court heard text messages between elizabeth and sonny and in one of them she'd said you have a breeze in the desert for me my water and ocean meant to be only together tiger to which sunny replied okay but after all the evidence was presented the jurors made their decision elizabeth had the best defense money could buy estimated to cost over 10 million dollars and yet despite her pleas and sob stories elizabeth left the court a convicted felon while surprisingly she was found not guilty of

defrauding patients she was found guilty of defrauding investors and charged with four counts of fraud with each count carrying a sentence up to 20 years in prison it's expected elizabeth will appeal the verdict but most experts think it's inevitable she will be going to jail although it's very unlikely to be the maximum sentence that something she deserves in fact some estimate it could just be a couple of years of prison time additionally she was fined five hundred thousand dollars by the sec but again something that is too low given that elizabeth took so much money

away from legitimate products that could have really benefited from it instead she burnt through money trying to achieve something experts repeatedly told her wasn't possible and she also spent huge sums of money on her extravagant lifestyle including private jets luxury hotels and countless assistants who took care of almost everything in her life what's the media initially portrayed theranos as an incredible success story it had quickly become a horror story and if it weren't for the whistleblowers who risked everything to get the truth out the consequences of theranos could have been catastrophic but one of the

biggest tragedies of all this was what happened to ian gibbons he was one of the first experienced scientists hired by theranos and for many years it led the chemistry team he worked there for nearly a decade and gave his all to the company to try and get the technology working in fact ian was responsible for many of the early patents theranos developed most of which elizabeth also put her name on but ian wanted things done properly and so like many others he ended up falling out with elizabeth and sunny because he disagreed with the way

they did things he insisted they need to make the test more accurate before letting patients use the devices as a result he got demoted and had his office taken away he was incredibly scared he was going to be fired but at 67 he felt he was too old to look for another job and didn't know what he was going to do with the rest of his life he spiraled into a depression and began drinking heavily the tipping point came when he was called to be a witness in a patent lawsuit against theranos he became so

distraught by the whole situation that he ended up overdosing on pills and his wife found him dead in their bathroom despite ian's huge influence at theranos employees weren't even told about his death and when his wife tried to contact elizabeth she never returned her calls all theranos did was send a formal letter demanding she return ian's laptop and phone immediately as they contained confidential information this was just yet another example of elizabeth's ruthlessness and lack of empathy for others of course it's very easy for us with hindsight to look back and say it was obvious

that elizabeth could never be trusted but before the whistleblowers came forward to help jon with his investigation it's understandable why so many people got sucked into her lies elizabeth was so well connected so convincing when she spoke and she was truly excellent at telling a story unfortunately that story was a fantasy although there is one final ridiculous detail that should have been a red flag right from the start which is that elizabeth's father was vice president of enron a company that went bankrupt after one of the largest fraud scandals in history [Applause] is [Music] [Music]

running through my face [Music]