A jury finds Elizabeth Holmes guilty of fraud

ON JANUARY 3RD, after seven days of deliberation, a 12-member jury in Silicon Valley found Elizabeth Holmes, the entrepreneur behind a blood-testing startup, guilty of four counts of fraudulently deceiving investors. Each count carries a prison term of up to 20 years; no date has been set for her sentencing. She was acquitted of four charges of deceiving patients and doctors; on three others the jury were deadlocked. The verdict, against which Ms Holmes’s lawyers are expected to appeal, marks the collapse of a career that beguiled the media, politicians and investors.After dropping out of Stanford University in 2003 at the age of 19, Ms Holmes founded Theranos to develop a radical advance in blood-testing technology that she hoped would allow hundreds of tests to be performed using a single tiny drop of blood rather than a full vial. The tantalising vision promised to make health care more effective and efficient.