Prosecutor Jeffrey Schenk opened his closing arguments in the case against Elizabeth Holmes by talking about a banker. Holmes knew Theranos, the company she founded, was running out of money, and she was on the phone asking her banker to clear a check early.
“Holmes had a choice to make,” Schenk said. She could figure out a way to raise funds to keep the company moving, or risk seeing it wither away. And her choice, he said, was to raise the funds through fraud.
The prosecution’s closing statement on Thursday was a reminder of what this trial is really about: money, and mostly rich people’s money. Those rich people, who gave their money to Theranos after Holmes pitched them on the promise of the company, are who the prosecutor referred to as ‘victims.’ Their money is what, according to the legal system, was manipulated during the years Theranos was the hottest startup in Silicon Valley.
