Silicon Valley's super scammer tricks to force employees to work late

According to the book “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley startup” by author John Carreyrou, the founder of Theranos was obsessed with tracking employees' working hours, as well as always finding ways to make them work late.

One of the tricks the Silicon Valley “super-swindler” used was to order dinner to Theranos’s office every night. However, Holmes had timed the deliveries to only take place between 8pm and 8:30pm, meaning employees would typically leave the office around 10pm.

Carreyrou, who exposed Theranos’ faulty blood-testing device, spoke to dozens of people at the company, once valued at $9 billion, for his book.

The dinner was just one of several tactics Holmes — who wanted to be a “female Steve Jobs” — used to inspire and manipulate Theranos employees.

Elizabeth Holmes at the Theranos factory. (Photo: NYT)

Holmes' assistants tracked employees' arrival and departure times each day, while IT staff monitored the software on their computers. Her subordinates added them to Facebook and told her what they were posting, the book reveals.

Holmes seems to be experiencing what Theranos employees went through when they entered prison life in Bryan, Texas (USA). According to the Wall Street Journal , she would be woken up at 6am and had to check in five times a day.

Holmes is the founder and CEO of biotech startup Theranos. At 19, Holmes dropped out of Stanford to start a company with the mission of creating a cheaper, more effective blood test than traditional methods. She promised that patients could know if they had cancer or diabetes with just a few drops of blood. She attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investment with the participation of many famous political figures and important partners.

However, a Wall Street Journal investigation into Theranos’ technology and testing brought the story to light, and Holmes and his business partner Ramesh Sunny Balwani were arrested in 2018. Holmes was convicted of four counts of fraud in January 2022 and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

(According to BI, CNN)

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