Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says in Sept 2013 Balwani and Holmes convinced the WSJ to run an article favoring Theranos that misled investors, and timed the release of a press statement that falsely claimed that Theranos's tech could do could do any blood test with a few drops of blood in hours.
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says sometimes Holmes took the lead in duping investors and sometimes Balwani took over. "The evidence will show that Balwani and Ms. Holmes were partners in virtually everything," he says.
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach is flipping through various Theranos PowerPoint slides purportedly made for investors. The slides were the focus of a lot of trial testimony in Holmes' trial and they make a number of claims about Theranos' technology and its ability to do any blood test.
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says Theranos' blood analyzers could only ever do 12 tests at most, and they did them badly, but by Sept 2015, when the startup came under scrutiny, it was using modified devices made by other cos to run tests.
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says Balwani and Holmes told investors that Theranos had deals with the U.S. military and pharma cos, but its military project "never got off the ground" and the devices were never used in the battlefield.
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says Balwani told investors as late as Oct 2014 that Theranos would have more than $140 million in revenue by the end of the year, even though it had only $150k that year. Balwani said it would have +$2 billion in revenue in 2015, but it only had less than $2 million.
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says Balwani was the primary contact for Theranos' Walgreens deal and in 2014, he allegedly lied to investors about the pace of the Walgreens rollout, even as Walgreens execs were telling him Theranos needed to cut its venous blood draws from 40% of patient draws to <10%
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
2h
Leach says Balwani and Holmes' scheme brought them fame and made them "billionaires." He says at its height, Balwani owned 28M shares worth $500 million, and Holmes owned 250 million shares worth $4.5 billion. (Holmes never cashed out her shares, but it's unclear if Balwani did.)
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
1h
Leach tells the jury they'll hear from whistleblower Erika Cheung & its ex-lab director Adam Rosendorff about the testing problems, as well as patients who received bogus pregnancy tests from Theranos. (Sounds like the gov't will call the exact same witnesses from Holmes' trial)
Dorothy Atkins@doratki
1h
Leach says the jury will also see how regularly and frequently Balwani and Holmes communicated (ie. via their cringeworthy text messages) and how they urged each other to pray during a federal lab inspection. He says investors didn't know they were dating.