Theranos duped savvy investor, blocked contact with partners, Holmes jury hears

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., left, arrives at federal court in San Jose, California, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021.

Enlarge / Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., left, arrives at federal court in San Jose, California, on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. (credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

We’ve noticed a recurring theme in the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes: most of Theranos’ investors didn’t do their homework before writing a check. But yesterday, the jury heard from one who most definitely did.

Brian Grossman is chief investment officer and a managing partner for PFM Health Sciences, a San Francisco-based hedge fund that, as the name suggests, specializes in health care investments. Ultimately, his firm invested $96 million in Theranos, and that investment underpins one of the counts of wire fraud with which Holmes has been charged.

Grossman began his day on the witness stand by recounting a December 2013 meeting he had with Holmes and Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani at the company’s lab in Palo Alto. Holmes and Balwani gave a presentation in which they claimed that Theranos had spent a decade in clinical trials and that their technology could do “a thousand” different blood tests.

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Source: Ars Technica – Theranos duped savvy investor, blocked contact with partners, Holmes jury hears