SAN JOSE, Calif. — Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, was found guilty of four charges of fraud on Monday, in a case that came to symbolize the pitfalls of Silicon Valley’s culture of hustle, hype and greed.
Ms. Holmes was the most prominent tech executive to field fraud accusations in a generation of high-flying, money-losing start-ups. A jury of eight men and four women took 50 hours to reach a verdict, convicting her of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was found not guilty on four other counts.
Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, terms that are likely to be served concurrently. Ms. Holmes is expected to appeal.
The verdict stands out for its rarity. Few technology executives are charged with fraud and even fewer are convicted. If sentenced to prison, Ms. Holmes would be the most notable female executive to serve time since Martha Stewart did in 2004 after lying to investigators about a stock sale. And Theranos, which dissolved in 2018, is likely to stand as a warning to other Silicon Valley start-ups that stretch the truth to score funding and business deals.
The verdict suggested that jurors believed the evidence presented by prosecutors that showed Ms. Holmes lied about Theranos’s technology to get money and fame. They were not swayed by her defense of blaming others for Theranos’s problems and accusing her co-conspirator, Ramesh Balwani, the company’s chief operating officer and her former boyfriend, of abusing her.
The guilty verdict arrived in a frenzied period for the tech industry, with investors fighting to get into hot deals and often ignoring potential red flags about the companies they were putting money into. Some have warned that more Theranos-like disasters loom.
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