Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes faces up to 80 years in jail after being convicted of defrauding investors in the blood-testing startup.
On Monday a jury in San Jose, California, convicted Holmes, 37, on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud after seven days of deliberation.
She was acquitted on four other counts of fraud and conspiracy that alleged she defrauded patients who paid for Theranos tests. The jury, of eight men and four women, was deadlocked on three counts related to other investors.
Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison for each count when sentenced by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, but it's unlikely that she'll receive the maximum sentence.
The split verdicts are "a mixed bag for the prosecution, but it's a loss for Elizabeth Holmes because she is going away to prison for at least a few years," David Ring, a lawyer who has followed the case closely, told The Associated Press.
Holmes, who was wearing a gray suit, stayed seated and emotionless as the verdicts were read, according to AP. She did not respond to questions that were asked as she made the short walk from the courthouse to the hotel she has been staying in during jury deliberations.
Holmes is to remain free on bond while awaiting sentencing. A sentencing date has not been set.
Prosecutors said Holmes, who founded Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19 after dropping out of Stanford University, duped private investors between 2010 and 2015 by convincing them that Theranos had developed revolutionary medical technology that could run a range of tests on just a single drop of blood from a finger prick.
Holmes raised over $900 million after attracting high-profile wealthy investors including media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Oracle founder Larry Ellison. But what wasn't known until later was that the company's blood-testing technology kept producing misleading results, forcing Theranos to secretly rely on conventional machines made by Siemens.
Theranos collapsed after The Wall Street Journal published a series of explosive articles that suggested the company's devices were flawed and inaccurate, and a regulatory audit uncovered potentially dangerous flaws in Theranos technology.
"She chose fraud over business failure," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Schenk said at the start of closing arguments. "She chose to be dishonest. That choice was not only callous, it was criminal."
Holmes was indicted in 2018 alongside Theranos' former chief operating officer Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. According to the AP, Davila has indicated he is likely to hold off on sentencing Holmes until the completion of a separate trial on similar fraud charges against Balwani, her former boyfriend.
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