Prosecutors and defense lawyers are scheduled to deliver opening statements Wednesday in the highly anticipated criminal trial of Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes, who faces federal charges of defrauding patients and investors with claims of revolutionary blood-testing technology, the Wall Street Journal reported. The opening remarks in court will be the first opportunity for the former chief executive’s lawyers and the prosecutors with the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of California to influence the jury in a trial expected to last more than three months. Ms. Holmes rose to fame as a Stanford University dropout who founded what appeared to be a cutting-edge health company, which was valued at more than $9 billion before imploding over questions about its technology. Prosecutors will lay out their case against Ms. Holmes, whom they have accused of fraudulently touting Theranos’s blood-testing machines as being able to test accurately and reliably for a range of health conditions using a few drops of blood from a finger prick. As reported in 2015, Theranos only used its finger-stick machines to analyze a small percentage of its blood tests and instead routinely used commercial analyzers and blood drawn from an arm vein. To win a conviction, government lawyers must convince the jury that Ms. Holmes intended to commit fraud, not simply that the company ran into problems living up to its promises. Ms. Holmes’s attorneys have said the once-lauded Silicon Valley executive believed in what Theranos set out to accomplish and didn’t defraud anyone. She has pleaded not guilty to 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
