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🧪 Theranos

Theranos timeline — 2003 founding to the 2022 sentences

Ten dated marks from Theranos’s founding through the 2015 Journal investigation, CMS sanctions, SEC charges, and the Holmes and Balwani sentences.

The company’s life is 2003–2018. The criminal case occupies 2018–2022.

These ten marks are the ones the trial stipulations and the major press chronologies agree on.

Timeline

  1. Company founded

    Elizabeth Holmes founds Theranos in Palo Alto, later claiming a small-sample testing platform that would become the Edison story.

  2. Walgreens rollout

    A retail partnership puts Theranos collection sites in stores, turning a private pitch into a consumer laboratory offering.

  3. Peak private valuation

    Press reports place the company near a $9 billion valuation. Holmes appears on magazine covers as a biotechnology founder.

  4. Journal investigation

    On 15 October the Wall Street Journal publishes Carreyrou’s first major article challenging the device claims and laboratory practice.

  5. CMS sanctions

    Medicare’s survey agency cites the Newark lab and later imposes sanctions, including a ban on Holmes’s running a lab for a period. Many results are voided.

  6. SEC charges; company ends

    The SEC charges Holmes and Balwani with fraud. Theranos begins dissolution. A criminal indictment follows in the Northern District of California.

  7. Holmes trial begins

    Jury selection and evidence in San Jose. The government focuses on investor representations about technology, partners, and the military.

  8. Holmes verdict

    On 3 January the jury convicts on four investor-related counts and acquits or hangs on others. Sentencing is set for later in the year.

  9. Balwani verdict

    In July a separate jury convicts Balwani on all counts, including patient-related fraud.

  10. Sentences

    Davila sentences Holmes to 135 months (18 November) and Balwani to 155 months (7 December). Both later report to custody after appeal-related delays.

After the 2022 sentences the live file is appellate and restitution arithmetic; the trial-court story of investor fraud is complete.

Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.

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