‘The Dropout’: Where is Elizabeth Holmes now?

‘The Dropout’ has helped shed some light on the Elizabeth Holmes scandals, the founder of Theranos accused of scamming millions of dollars and gambling with people’s health through her failed blood test invention. In the series (premiered in Spain through Disney+) we follow the rise and fall of Holmes step by step, but, what has become of her? Did she ever pay for her crimes? And how did his relationship with Sunny Balwani end?

Created by Elizabeth Meriwether (‘New Girl’), the series is both a chronicle of the creation of Theranos and a sharp analysis of the culture of Silicon Valley and late capitalism in the United States, a story with a class and, above all, gender perspective: Holmes was elevated for years to the status of a role model, painted as an ambitious and visionary woman in the business world who shattered glass ceilings. However, the gravelly voice and turtlenecks were the result of a calculated Steve Jobs-style standard CEO façade, and what lay behind it was the classic fake it until you make it. Theranos spent years and years spending their investors’ money knowing that the prototype they had initially sold (a machine capable of giving a medical diagnosis with just a drop of blood) did not exist and would not exist for at least a decade and all kinds of tricks and lies were used to keep the ship afloat at the cost of false and dangerous diagnoses to customers that they were able to test their inventions through the drugstore chain Walgreens.

Everything is brilliantly told in the eight episodes that make up ‘The Dropout’, starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes and directed for the most part by Michael Showalter (director of ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’). In the last episode we are given some information about the current situation of the protagonist, who saw how her empire was going to sink in 2017, but the truth is that her destiny still hangs in the balance in 2022.

Currently, and having served 37 years, Elizabeth Holmes is awaiting sentencing. Her trial ended earlier this year 2022, and she was found guilty on three counts of fraud against her, in addition to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud. However, all of these charges were the ones affecting her investors, while the four fraud charges filed on behalf of Theranos patients were unsuccessful. The reason? According to the jury, Holmes deliberately lied to her investors to obtain money and therefore there was a deliberate intention to defraud, while, in the case of the patients, they did not consider that the businesswoman was directly lying to them.

The trial ended in January 2022, but the sentence will not be known until next September 26. The Theranos founder faces the possibility of 20 years in prison, as well as a sentence to repay all those she has proven she defrauded. If you have seen the series, you will know that this can be a lot of money. Until the details of the sentence are known, Holmes is out on bail..

Elizabeth Holmes has been much luckier in her personal life in recent years. In 2019 she got engaged to William Evans, wealthy heir to a hotel chain, Evans Hotel Group. Interestingly, the two had one of their first dates at the Burning Man festival in 2018, just a few days before Theranos went out of business altogether. Evans is 29 years old. Both had their first child in July 2021, and live in a mansion in Woodside, California, valued at more than 135 million dollars. As this Vanity Fair journalist points out, who shared some photos of the couple together taken from his private Instagram, it is incredible that a person charged with more than a dozen criminal charges and who has damaged the lives of thousands of people is happier than a partridge. And living in abundance, of course.

In the podcast ‘” data-vars-ga-product-id=”438bca23-ac8c-4386-b507-349513dd3c96″ data-vars-ga-product-price=”0.00″ data-vars-ga-product-sem3-brand =”” data-vars-ga-product-sem3-category=”” data-vars-ga-product-sem3-id=”” data-affiliate-network=”” data-vars-ga-media-type=”” data -affiliate=”true”>The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial’, on which the Disney+ series was based, criminal attorney Caroline Polisi says something interesting: “The fact that Holmes is a young mother and new to motherhood is going to be a big factor in sentencing.” Could things work out for Holmes and avoid jail by scratching his pockets a bit? We will have to wait until September to find out.

For its part, the trial of his ex-partner and COO of Theranos, Sunny Balwani, began last March 2022. Like Holmes, he faces nine counts of fraud and two counts of conspiracy to defraud both investors and patients.