The most powerful "female elite" in history: a drop of blood cheated the United States of America 9 billion dollars, the American celebrities to play a fool-

From "halfway out" of college, to be among the "Forbes" list of the United States 400 billionaires, the United States has become the youngest female billionaires from scratch, Elizabeth Holmes only used a short twelve years.

In 2015, Holmes had just turned 30, and being young, beautiful, and full of talent were nothing more than the most trivial of synonyms for her.

Putting these aside, Holmes is more enviable, she created a company called Theranos, which was valued at $9 billion by venture capital, equivalent to about 60 billion yuan.

At the time, she was a role model for countless women, and a "female Steve Jobs" in the eyes of the world, all of whose fans believed that they had witnessed the birth of a new "legend.

Even the world's newspaper mogul Murdoch, Oracle's founder Larry, and former U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger were convinced.

However, just a few months later, everything changed forever.

It was only after a report in the Wall Street Journal that people learned that the "female Steve Jobs" was a fake, and that the alleged fraud was real.

Holmes once from the company's CEO position, fell to the court "guest", was called the world's first female fraud!

So how did she manage this "scam of the century"? The first time I've seen this, I've seen a lot of people who have been in the same boat for years. And how did it end?

Elizabeth Holmes's start in life, from birth, has been far removed from many ordinary children.

As both parents worked in politics, the family was very well off, so she never had to worry about running out of money.

And these favorable conditions, did not let Holmes sink into eating and drinking, on the contrary, at a very young age, she was very smart and studious.

When she was 7 years old, she was still in elementary school, she could already draw the design drawings of the time machine on the laptop; when she was 9 years old, when others asked her what her dream was, she answered "billionaire".

As the saying goes, "children's words are dangerous", and few people take what they say as children seriously, but Holmes has to use her strength to show the world that she can do what she says she can do.

After high school, Holmes not only became more and more beautiful, but also began to work toward academic excellence.

At the time, she maintained an "A" in every subject, and was always the brightest among the students in the school, and many people envied her for her intelligence and thought she was a genius.

But Holmes never wanted to stop there. In her free time, she learned to program, and sold her own compilers, earning her first bucket of money.

In 2003, Holmes, a freshman at Stanford University, was given the opportunity to do an internship in Singapore, and it was during this period that she invented her first patent - a diagnostic arm that could cure diseases.

Feeling confident, she rushed to her mentor, Channing Robertson, with her patent at the end of the summer, proposing that she drop out of school immediately because she had found a way to do something more affordable and convenient than traditional blood tests!

Holmes wants to build a healthcare system that will revolutionize healthcare, and instead of improving on what's already out there, she wants to invent an entirely new technology that can benefit people of all geographies, ages, genders, and races.

The mentor was very positive about the student's patent and supported her in pursuing her dream.

And so, Holmes dropped out of school to start her own business before even finishing her sophomore year, officially entering a new phase of her life.

That year, Holmes took the money he had saved from college, along with his parents' pensions, and started a blood-testing company in Palo Alto, California called Theranos, which is the English word for therapy. Theranos is a portmanteau of "therapy" and "diagnosis", and the CEO is herself.

The questions of how to introduce a new company to the outside world and how to launch its products and concepts were not difficult for Holmes, who had a clear goal in mind.

At the time, Holmes was publicizing Theranos as something different from the traditional blood test.

Patients would only need to use the "Edison" device she developed to take "a few drops of blood" from their fingertips to complete more than two hundred tests for symptoms such as cancer and diabetes.

This would reduce the cost of storing and transporting blood, as well as make it easier for people who are terrified of needles to get regular blood tests.

Holmes also said that their company's product will not only greatly reduce the time of the blood test, but also very inexpensive, each blood test can cost as little as $2.99, which is less than twenty dollars.

As soon as this technology was launched, a huge "storm" was created in the entire U.S. pharmaceutical market, and some people didn't believe that it was just a fantasy, while others were very supportive, and thought that this genius would definitely make some achievements in the medical field.

In fact, many medical experts have questioned Holmes's idea, and they don't believe in the accuracy of the test, especially after hearing the "Theranos" company's very "general" announcement.

The test has been used in a number of different ways, including in the form of the Theranos test.

Holmes, however, vowed that it could be done, and did a 26-page speech on the subject, hoping to secure investment soon.

At the time, a number of investors expressed disappointment that she couldn't answer the specifics of the technology, but some chose to believe in the support given her family background.

So soon Holmes had raised $15 million in the first two rounds of funding, and slowly a number of others chipped in, bringing her up to about $47 million by the third round.

With the funding, she went into "workaholic" mode, trying to realize the "new technology" she had been talking about as quickly as possible.

During this time, an employee who used to work at Apple told her, "If someone compares you to Steve Jobs, you should at least be wearing something that matches."

Holmes took this remark to heart, and from then on, she began to change her outward appearance, wearing nothing but black, which, along with her demeanor, made people feel more and more mature and confident.

Five years later, in 2008, the board of directors became very skeptical of Holmes's ability to deliver, given the company's lack of profitability.

They wanted to strip Holmes of his CEO position, but it took him just two hours to turn things around.

Knowing that the board was going to remove herself, Holmes was quick to admit her mistake to the crowd and promised not to do it again, perhaps because she was so sincere, and in the end, the CEO position was saved.

After this thrilling moment, Holmes was not shocked, but secretly decided that she would not let the board of directors decide whether she would stay or go, or anything else in the company.

In 2013, she did, and became a true "queen" of the company, and anyone who questioned her was basically fired.

After that, under Holmes's planning, Theranos became a better and better company, bigger and bigger, with up to 700 employees.

And to prove her skills to the outside world, that year she officially opened up testing to the public, opening 42 blood-collection health centers in the Phoenix area, two more in California, and one in Pennsylvania.

At the same time, she signed an agreement to officially partner with Walgreens, the largest drug retailer within the United States.

Thanks to Holmes' influence, the investor base behind Theranos has grown rapidly, and includes some of the biggest names in the world.

For example, media mogul Murdoch, Oracle founder Larry, former US Secretary of State Kissinger, US Central Command Secretary Sam Nunn, and so on, covering a wide range of military, political, and economic fields.

They really saw Holmes as a "revolutionary" who could change the medical profession, a genius like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Even though she was reluctant to share her technology and even lied about it being a "trade secret".

And with so much support, Theranos began to be hailed higher and higher, with venture capital valuations soaring to $9 billion, and Holmes herself rated as the youngest female billionaire in US history to start a business from scratch!

In 2015, she was even featured on the Forbes 400 list of America's richest people and in major mainstream magazines such as Time and Fortune, making her more visible.

The effusive praise from all directions made Holmes lose her way, and her many public speeches made her even more convinced that her technology was a success.

However, twelve years on, it's time for the original flawed "scam of the century" to show its true colors!

He read a piece in The New Yorker about Holmes and her company, Theranos, and challenged it, and was soon contacted by a man named Richard.

It was only when Adam asked that he realized that this Richard had a bad past with Holmes.

They were originally neighbors, and in 2006, Richard applied for a patent, but Holmes smeared it as plagiarism, so the two families turned against each other and started a lawsuit.

After two and a half years, the defense costs were too much for Richard to afford, so he had to settle and watch Holmes win.

After learning about this, Adam was furious, thinking that if he had to fight it, only the Wall Street Journal could do it.

After hearing Adam's words, Carreyrou originally did not want to pay much attention to them, but based on the professional ethics and quality of a journalist, he had no way to turn a blind eye.

What if their skepticism is true? Test data is crucial to doctors, they are not just a string of numbers, behind the representative of a precious life.

In the end, Karelu was determined and ready to take a serious look into the matter. And what happened next was greatly out of his expectation.

Karello contacted Alan Beam, a former lab director at Theranos, who told him that the Edison testing equipment didn't work, and that the data they had submitted to regulators was false.

In addition, the company's attitude towards its employees is very poor, whether it's a working day or a day off, they are always on call. And the company also does not allow employees to issue any objections, once found will be immediately fired, serious will also eat the lawsuit.

When he heard this, Karello had a lot of doubts, and was driven by curiosity, he wanted to dig deeper and deeper.

Karello contacted more than 20 employees of Theranos, trying to get more information from their mouths, but they signed a confidentiality agreement and could not disclose any insider information.

Karello had no choice but to go through various channels to find other employees who had left the company or who knew what was going on, and one of them, Erica, boldly revealed what she had seen.

It turns out that she has long questioned the operation of this company, and even responded to many of the higher-ups, but they all chose to avoid ignoring, unwilling to put up with all of this Erika, and finally had to choose to resign.

Even so, Theranos didn't let her off the hook, and even threatened her with verbal abuse, which led to Erika not daring to speak out, until Karello showed up, letting her know that she wasn't alone.

After collecting more definitive evidence, October 16th of the same year, Karello officially published a story in the Wall Street Journal exposing Theranos' mainstay Edison. "The blood test was found to be grossly inaccurate.

The report said that Theranos has always been in a regulatory gray area, and according to the law, blood testing devices should be approved by the FDA before they are marketed.

But Theranos has never sold a single device, and has only used it in its own testing centers, which is why no one has ever questioned its illegality over the years.

When the story was published, Theranos first made high-profile denials on various occasions, and Holmes made public appearances to express his shock and disbelief.

However, as public opinion grew and more people came forward, two of the company's labs were soon shut down, followed by a series of investigations by government agencies and lawsuits from investors.

And in Forbes's latest assessment of entrepreneurs' net worth, Holmes was down to zero.

In 2018, Holmes was charged with "massive fraud" by the SEC, which Holmes tried to undo to no avail.

In September of that year, Theranos was officially dissolved.

In August 2020, Holmes went on trial.

In January 2022, Holmes was convicted on four counts and acquitted on four counts, with three counts pending, based on an indictment charging him with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

According to foreign media reports, Holmes may face 20 years in prison ......