The fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the disgraced blood testing company Theranos, is set to begin on Tuesday.
In 2003, Stanford University drop out Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize the blood-testing industry with portable machines that could conduct a full array of tests with just a few drops of blood.
"This happened many years ago, but this case has been going on," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. "She misrepresented what this company could do and defrauded people out of millions of dollars."
Levenson told KCBS Radio that the prosecution will call a range of witnesses including insiders who will say that Holmes knew the machines did not work, investors who lost hundreds of millions of dollars and patients who received false results from Theranos that put their lives at risk.
It is expected that Holmes’ defense will point a finger at Theranos President Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani.
"The defense by Elizabeth Holmes is going to be either 'I really believed that these tests work’ or ‘I was forced to do it,'" said Levenson. "That’s the latest defense that came out, that she was being abused by Balwani who at the time was also her boyfriend and that he either confused her into believing this or forced her to proceed anyway."
If convicted, Holmes could face up to 20 years in prison.
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