The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes: A timeline | CNN Business

CNN —

More than three years after Elizabeth Holmes was first indicted and nearly four months after her trial kicked off, the founder and former CEO of failed blood testing startup Theranos was found guilty on four out of 11 federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

The verdict comes after a stunning downfall that saw Holmes, once hailed as the next Steve Jobs, go from being a tech industry icon to being a rare Silicon Valley entrepreneur on trial for fraud.

A Stanford University dropout, Holmes – inspired by her own fear of needles – started the company at the age of 19, with a mission of creating a cheaper, more efficient alternative to a traditional blood test. Theranos promised patients the ability to test for conditions like cancer and diabetes with just a few drops of blood. She attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, a board of well-known political figures, and key retail partners.

But a Wall Street Journal investigation poked holes into Theranos’ testing and technology, and the dominoes fell from there. Holmes and her former business partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were charged in 2018 by the US government with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. (Both pleaded not guilty.)

Here are the highlights of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

March 2004: Holmes drops out of Stanford to pursue Theranos

Holmes, a Stanford University sophomore studying chemical engineering, drops out of school to pursue her startup, Theranos, which she founded in 2003 at age 19. The name is a combination of the words “therapy” and “diagnosis.”

September 2009: Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani joins Theranos as Holmes’ right-hand man

Balwani joins as chief operating officer and president of the startup. Balwani, nearly 20 years her senior, met Holmes in 2002 on a trip to Beijing through Stanford University. The two are later revealed to be romantically involved.

September 2013: Holmes opens up about Theranos; announces Walgreens partnership

A decade after first starting the company, Holmes takes the lid off Theranos and courts media attention the same month that Theranos and Walgreens announce they’ve struck up a long-term partnership. The first Theranos Wellness Center location opens in a Walgreens in Palo Alto where consumers can access Theranos’ blood test.

The original plan had been to make Theranos’ testing available at Walgreens locations nationwide.

September 2014: Holmes named one of the richest women in America by Forbes

Holmes is named to the magazine’s American billionaire list with the outlet reporting she owns a 50% stake in the startup, pinning her personal wealth at $4.5 billion.

Elizabeth Holmes speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt on September 8, 2014 in San Francisco, California. Steve Jennings/Getty Images

December 2014: Theranos has raised $400 million

Theranos has raised more than $400 million, according to a profile of the company and Holmes by The New Yorker. It counts Oracle’s Larry Ellison among its investors.

July 2015: Theranos gets FDA approval for Herpes test

The FDA clears Theranos to use of its proprietary tiny blood-collection vials to finger stick blood test for herpes simplex 1 virus – its first and only approval for a diagnostic test.

October 2015: Theranos is the subject of a Wall Street Journal investigation; Holmes hits back

The Wall Street Journal reports Theranos is using its proprietary technique on only a small number of the 240 tests it performs, and that the vast majority of its tests are done with traditional vials of blood drawn from the arm, not the “few drops” taken by a finger prick. In response, Theranos defends its testing practices, calling the Journal’s reporting “factually and scientifically erroneous.”

A day later, Theranos halts the use of its blood-collection vials for all but the herpes test due to pressures from the FDA. (Later that month, the FDA released two heavily redacted reports citing 14 concerns, including calling the company’s proprietary vial an “uncleared medical device.”)

One week after the Journal report, Holmes is interviewed on-stage at the outlet’s conference in Laguna Beach. “We know what we’re doing and we’re very proud of it,” she says.

Holmes speaking at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 21, 2015. Glenn Chapman/AFP/Getty Images

Amid the criticism, Theranos reportedly shakes up its board of directors, eliminating Henry Kissinger and George Shultz as directors while moving them to a new board of counselors; the company also forms a separate medical board.

November 2015: Theranos and Safeway partnership falls short

Safeway, which invested $350 million into building out clinics in hundreds of its supermarkets to eventually offer Theranos blood tests, reportedly looks to dissolve its relationship with the company before it ever offered its services.

January 2016: Federal regulators take issue with Theranos’ California lab; Walgreens pulls back

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sends Theranos a letter saying its California lab has failed to comply with federal standards and that patients are in “immediate jeopardy.” It gives the company 10 days to address the issues.

In response, Walgreens says it will not send any lab tests to Theranos’ California lab for analysis and suspends Theranos services at its Palo Alto Walgreens location.

March 2016: CMS threatens to ban Holmes, Balwani from lab business

CMS threatens to ban Holmes and Balwani from the laboratory business for two years after the company allegedly failed to fix problems at its California lab. Theranos says that’s a “worst case scenario.”

May 2016: Balwani steps down; Theranos voids two years of blood tests

Balwani departs. The company also adds three new board members as part of the restructuring: Fabrizio Bonanni, a former executive vice president of biotech firm Amgen, former CDC director William Foege, and former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich.

Theranos voids two years of blood test results from its proprietary testing devices, correcting tens of thousands of blood-test reports, the Journal reports.

June 2016: Holmes net worth revised to $0; Theranos loses its largest retail partner

Forbes revises its estimate of Holmes’ net worth from $4.5 billion to $0. The magazine also lowers its valuation for the company from $9 billion to $800 million.

Walgreens, once Theranos’ largest retail partner, ends its partnership with the company and says it will close all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers.

July 2016: Holmes is banned from running labs for two years

CMS revokes Theranos’ license to operate its California lab and bans Holmes from running a blood-testing lab for two years.

August 2016: The company unveils ‘miniLab’ device

Holmes tries to move past recent setbacks by unveiling a mini testing laboratory, called miniLab, at a conference for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. In selling the device, versus operating its own clinics, Theranos seeks to effectively side-step CMS sanctions, which don’t prohibit research and development.

October 2016: Theranos investor sues the company; Theranos downsizes

Theranos investor Partner Fund Management sues the company for $96.1 million, the amount it sunk into the company in February 2014, plus damages. It accuses the company of securities fraud. Theranos and Partner Fund Management settled in May, 2017, for an undisclosed amount.

The company also lays off 340 employees as it closes clinical labs and wellness centers as it attempts to pivot and focus on the miniLab.

November 2016: Walgreens sues Theranos

Walgreens sues the blood testing startup for breach of contract. Walgreens sought to recover the $140 million it poured into the company. The lawsuit was settled August, 2017.

January 2017: More layoffs, followed by a failed lab inspection

Theranos downsizes its workforce yet again following the increased scrutiny into its operations, laying off approximately 155 employees or about 41% of staffers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Theranos failed a second regulatory lab inspection in September, and that the company was closing its last blood testing location as a result.

April 2017: Theranos settles with CMS, and Arizona AG

Theranos settles with the CMS, agreeing to pay $30,000 and to not to own or operate any clinical labs for two years.

Theranos also settles with the Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich over allegations that its advertisements misrepresented the method, accuracy, and reliability of its blood testing and that the company was out of compliance with federal regulations governing clinical lab testing. Theranos agrees to pay $4.65 million back to its Arizona customers as part of a settlement deal.

March 2018: Holmes charged with massive fraud

The SEC charges Holmes and Balwani with a “massive fraud” involving more than $700 million from investors through an “elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

The SEC alleges Holmes and Balwani knew that Theranos’ proprietary analyzer could perform only 12 of the 200 tests it published on its patient testing menu.

Theranos and Holmes agree to resolve the claims against them, and Holmes gives up control of the company and much of her stake in it. Balwani, however, is fighting the charges, with his attorney saying he “accurately represented Theranos to investors to the best of his ability.”

May 2018: “Bad Blood”

Reporter John Carreyrou, who first broke open the story of Theranos for the Wall Street Journal, publishes “Bad Blood,” a definitive look at what happened inside the disgraced company. Director Adam McKay (who directed “The Big Short”) secures the rights to make the film, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, by the same name.

June 2018: Holmes and Balwani indicted on criminal fraud charges

Holmes and Balwani are indicted on federal wire fraud charges over allegedly engaging in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, as well as a scheme to defraud doctors and patients. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Minutes before the charges were made public, Theranos announced that Holmes has stepped down as CEO. The company’s general counsel, David Taylor, takes over as CEO. Holmes remains chair of the company’s board.

Former Theranos COO Ramesh "Sunny' Balwani leaves the Robert F. Peckham U.S. Federal Court on June 28, 2019 in San Jose, California. Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former COO Ramesh Balwani were apperaing in federal court for a status hearing, both facing charges of conspiracy and wire fraud for allegedly engaging in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors with the Theranos blood testing lab services. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

September 2018: Theranos to dissolve

Taylor emails shareholders that Theranos will dissolve, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Taylor said more than 80 potential buyers were not interested in a sale. “We are now out of time,” Taylor wrote.

March 2019: Theranos gets the documentary treatment

Alex Gibney, the prolific documentary filmmaker behind “Dirty Money,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and “The Armstrong Lie,” debuts “The Inventor” on HBO, following the rise and fall of Theranos.

September 2020: Holmes’ possible defense strategy comes to light

A new court document reveals Holmes may seek a “mental disease” defense in her criminal fraud trial. Later, in August 2021, unsealed court documents reveal Holmes is likely to claim she was the victim of a decade-long abusive relationship with Balwani. The allegations led to the severing of their trials. His trial is slated to begin in 2022.

December 2020: Holmes’ criminal trial delayed til 2021

Initially set to begin in July 2020, Holmes’ criminal trial is further delayed til July 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

March 2021: Holmes’ pregnancy further delays trial

News surfaces that Holmes’ is expecting her first child, once more further delaying her criminal trial. Holmes’ counsel advised the US government that Holmes is due in July 2021, a court document revealed. She gave birth in July.

Holmes collects her belongings after going through security at the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building with her defense team on August 31, 2021 in San Jose, California. Ethan Swope/Getty Images

August 2021: Holmes’ criminal trial begins with jury selection

More than 80 potential jurors are brought into a San Jose courtroom for questioning over the course of two days to determine if they are fit to serve as impartial, fair jurors for the criminal trial of Holmes. A jury of seven men and five women is selected, with five alternatives.

December 2021: Jury begins deliberating her fate

After three months of testimony from 32 witnesses, the criminal fraud case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes makes its way to the jury of eight men and four women who will decide her fate. The jury would go on to deliberate for more than 50 hours before returning a verdict.

January 2022: Holmes found guilty on four of 11 federal charges

Holmes is found guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud investors as well as three wire fraud counts tied to specific investors. She is found not guilty on three additional charges concerning defrauding patients and one charge of conspiracy to defraud patients. The jury returns no verdict on three of the charges concerning defrauding investors. Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count.

March 2022: After Hulu miniseries debuts, Balwani’s criminal trial kicks off

“The Dropout,” a scripted miniseries about Theranos produced by ABC, debuts on Hulu. Amanda Seyfried stars as Holmes and Naveen Andrews plays Balwani. Their romantic and professional relationship features prominently in the show.

Following delays due to Holmes’ prolonged trial then a surge of Covid-19, jury selection for Balwani’s trial gets underway. On March 22, opening arguments are held and the government’s first witness, a former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, is called to the stand.

July 2022: Balwani guilty of federal fraud

After four full days of deliberations, a jury finds Balwani guilty of ten counts of federal wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Like Holmes, Balwani faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count of wire fraud and each conspiracy count.

September 2022: Holmes asks for new trial, says a key witness expressed regrets

Holmes asks for a new trial after claiming that a key witness visited her house unannounced and allegedly said he “feels guilty” about his testimony.

In a court filing with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Holmes’ attorneys said Adam Rosendorff, a former Theranos lab director who was one of the government’s main witnesses, arrived at her home on August 8 asking to speak with her. According to the filing, Rosendorff did not interact with Holmes but did speak to her partner Billy Evans, who recounted the exchange in an email to Holmes’ lawyers shortly after.

“His shirt was untucked, his hair was messy, his voice slightly trembled,” Evans wrote about Rosendorff. According to Evans’ email, Rosendorff “said when he was called as a witness he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everybody look bad.”

The former Theranos lab director also “said he felt like he had done something wrong,” Evans wrote.

October 2022: Rosendorff takes the stand again

Rosendorff takes the stand again to address concerns from Holmes’ defense team and their claims he had shown up at her home after the trial concluded asking to speak with her and expressed regrets about his testimony.

At the hearing, Rosendorff reaffirmed the truthfulness of his testimony at Holmes’ trial and said that the government did not influence what he said.

November 2022: Request for new trial is denied

A federal judge denies Elizabeth Holmes’ request for a new trial, according to court filings, paving the way for the founder of failed blood testing startup Theranos to be sentenced later in the month.

CNN —

More than three years after Elizabeth Holmes was first indicted and nearly four months after her trial kicked off, the founder and former CEO of failed blood testing startup Theranos was found guilty on four out of 11 federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

Holmes, the founder and former CEO of Theranos, was found guilty on four out of 11 federal fraud and conspiracy charges in January after a months-long trial. Balwani, Theranos’ former president and COO who was also Holmes’ live-in boyfriend at the time, was found guilty on Thursday of ten counts of federal wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The verdict comes after a stunning downfall that saw Holmes, once hailed as the next Steve Jobs, go from being a tech industry icon to being a rare Silicon Valley entrepreneur on trial for fraud.

But a Wall Street Journal investigation poked holes into Theranos’ testing and technology, and the dominoes fell from there. Holmes and her former business partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were charged in 2018 by the US government with multiple counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. (Both pleaded not guilty.)

Their trials were separated after Holmes indicated she would pursue a defense that included alleging she was the victim of a decade-long abusive relationship with Balwani that impacted every part of her life. (Balwani’s legal team has strongly denied the allegations in court filings.)

Here are the highlights of the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

March 2004: Holmes drops out of Stanford to pursue Theranos

Holmes, a Stanford University sophomore studying chemical engineering, drops out of school to pursue her startup, Theranos, which she founded in 2003 at age 19. The name is a combination of the words “therapy” and “diagnosis.”

September 2009: Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani joins Theranos as Holmes’ right-hand man

Balwani joins as chief operating officer and president of the startup. Balwani, nearly 20 years her senior, met Holmes in 2002 on a trip to Beijing through Stanford University. The two are later revealed to be romantically involved.

The two kept in touch and began living together in 2005, Holmes testified during her criminal trial. Their personal relationship was largely concealed from employees, investors and business partners. Balwani would ultimately become the company’s chief operating officer and president of the startup.

September 2013: Holmes opens up about Theranos; announces Walgreens partnership

A decade after first starting the company, Holmes takes the lid off Theranos and courts media attention the same month that Theranos and Walgreens announce they’ve struck up a long-term partnership. The first Theranos Wellness Center location opens in a Walgreens in Palo Alto where consumers can access Theranos’ blood test.

The original plan had been to make Theranos’ testing available at Walgreens locations nationwide.

September 2014: Holmes named one of the richest women in America by Forbes

Holmes is named to the magazine’s American billionaire list with the outlet reporting she owns a 50% stake in the startup, pinning her personal wealth at $4.5 billion.

Elizabeth Holmes speaking onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt on September 8, 2014 in San Francisco, California. Steve Jennings/Getty Images

December 2014: Theranos has raised $400 million

Theranos has raised more than $400 million, according to a profile of the company and Holmes by The New Yorker. It counts Oracle’s Larry Ellison among its investors.

July 2015: Theranos gets FDA approval for Herpes test

The FDA clears Theranos to use of its proprietary tiny blood-collection vials to finger stick blood test for herpes simplex 1 virus – its first and only approval for a diagnostic test.

October 2015: Theranos is the subject of a Wall Street Journal investigation; Holmes hits back

The Wall Street Journal reports Theranos is using its proprietary technique on only a small number of the 240 tests it performs, and that the vast majority of its tests are done with traditional vials of blood drawn from the arm, not the “few drops” taken by a finger prick. In response, Theranos defends its testing practices, calling the Journal’s reporting “factually and scientifically erroneous.”

A day later, Theranos halts the use of its blood-collection vials for all but the herpes test due to pressures from the FDA. (Later that month, the FDA released two heavily redacted reports citing 14 concerns, including calling the company’s proprietary vial an “uncleared medical device.”)

One week after the Journal report, Holmes is interviewed on-stage at the outlet’s conference in Laguna Beach. “We know what we’re doing and we’re very proud of it,” she says.

Holmes speaking at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 21, 2015. Glenn Chapman/AFP/Getty Images

Amid the criticism, Theranos reportedly shakes up its board of directors, eliminating Henry Kissinger and George Shultz as directors while moving them to a new board of counselors; the company also forms a separate medical board.

November 2015: Theranos and Safeway partnership falls short

Safeway, which invested $350 million into building out clinics in hundreds of its supermarkets to eventually offer Theranos blood tests, reportedly looks to dissolve its relationship with the company before it ever offered its services.

January 2016: Federal regulators take issue with Theranos’ California lab; Walgreens pulls back

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sends Theranos a letter saying its California lab has failed to comply with federal standards and that patients are in “immediate jeopardy.” It gives the company 10 days to address the issues.

In response, Walgreens says it will not send any lab tests to Theranos’ California lab for analysis and suspends Theranos services at its Palo Alto Walgreens location.

March 2016: CMS threatens to ban Holmes, Balwani from lab business

CMS threatens to ban Holmes and Balwani from the laboratory business for two years after the company allegedly failed to fix problems at its California lab. Theranos says that’s a “worst case scenario.”

May 2016: Balwani steps down; Theranos voids two years of blood tests

Balwani departs. The company also adds three new board members as part of the restructuring: Fabrizio Bonanni, a former executive vice president of biotech firm Amgen, former CDC director William Foege, and former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich.

Theranos voids two years of blood test results from its proprietary testing devices, correcting tens of thousands of blood-test reports, the Journal reports.

June 2016: Holmes net worth revised to $0; Theranos loses its largest retail partner

Forbes revises its estimate of Holmes’ net worth from $4.5 billion to $0. The magazine also lowers its valuation for the company from $9 billion to $800 million.

Walgreens, once Theranos’ largest retail partner, ends its partnership with the company and says it will close all 40 Theranos Wellness Centers.

July 2016: Holmes is banned from running labs for two years

CMS revokes Theranos’ license to operate its California lab and bans Holmes from running a blood-testing lab for two years.

August 2016: The company unveils ‘miniLab’ device

Holmes tries to move past recent setbacks by unveiling a mini testing laboratory, called miniLab, at a conference for the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. In selling the device, versus operating its own clinics, Theranos seeks to effectively side-step CMS sanctions, which don’t prohibit research and development.

October 2016: Theranos investor sues the company; Theranos downsizes

Theranos investor Partner Fund Management sues the company for $96.1 million, the amount it sunk into the company in February 2014, plus damages. It accuses the company of securities fraud. Theranos and Partner Fund Management settled in May, 2017, for an undisclosed amount.

The company also lays off 340 employees as it closes clinical labs and wellness centers as it attempts to pivot and focus on the miniLab.

November 2016: Walgreens sues Theranos

Walgreens sues the blood testing startup for breach of contract. Walgreens sought to recover the $140 million it poured into the company. The lawsuit was settled August, 2017.

January 2017: More layoffs, followed by a failed lab inspection

Theranos downsizes its workforce yet again following the increased scrutiny into its operations, laying off approximately 155 employees or about 41% of staffers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Theranos failed a second regulatory lab inspection in September, and that the company was closing its last blood testing location as a result.

April 2017: Theranos settles with CMS, and Arizona AG

Theranos settles with the CMS, agreeing to pay $30,000 and to not to own or operate any clinical labs for two years.

Theranos also settles with the Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich over allegations that its advertisements misrepresented the method, accuracy, and reliability of its blood testing and that the company was out of compliance with federal regulations governing clinical lab testing. Theranos agrees to pay $4.65 million back to its Arizona customers as part of a settlement deal.

March 2018: Holmes charged with massive fraud

The SEC charges Holmes and Balwani with a “massive fraud” involving more than $700 million from investors through an “elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”

The SEC alleges Holmes and Balwani knew that Theranos’ proprietary analyzer could perform only 12 of the 200 tests it published on its patient testing menu.

Theranos and Holmes agree to resolve the claims against them, and Holmes gives up control of the company and much of her stake in it. Balwani, however, is fighting the charges, with his attorney saying he “accurately represented Theranos to investors to the best of his ability.”

May 2018: “Bad Blood”

Reporter John Carreyrou, who first broke open the story of Theranos for the Wall Street Journal, publishes “Bad Blood,” a definitive look at what happened inside the disgraced company. Director Adam McKay (who directed “The Big Short”) secures the rights to make the film, starring Jennifer Lawrence as Holmes, by the same name.

June 2018: Holmes and Balwani indicted on criminal fraud charges

Holmes and Balwani are indicted on federal wire fraud charges over allegedly engaging in a multi-million dollar scheme to defraud investors, as well as a scheme to defraud doctors and patients. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Minutes before the charges were made public, Theranos announced that Holmes has stepped down as CEO. The company’s general counsel, David Taylor, takes over as CEO. Holmes remains chair of the company’s board.

Former Theranos COO Ramesh "Sunny' Balwani leaves the Robert F. Peckham U.S. Federal Court on June 28, 2019 in San Jose, California. Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes and former COO Ramesh Balwani were apperaing in federal court for a status hearing, both facing charges of conspiracy and wire fraud for allegedly engaging in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors with the Theranos blood testing lab services. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

September 2018: Theranos to dissolve

Taylor emails shareholders that Theranos will dissolve, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Taylor said more than 80 potential buyers were not interested in a sale. “We are now out of time,” Taylor wrote.

March 2019: Theranos gets the documentary treatment

Alex Gibney, the prolific documentary filmmaker behind “Dirty Money,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and “The Armstrong Lie,” debuts “The Inventor” on HBO, following the rise and fall of Theranos.

September 2020: Holmes’ possible defense strategy comes to light

A new court document reveals Holmes may seek a “mental disease” defense in her criminal fraud trial. Later, in August 2021, unsealed court documents reveal Holmes is likely to claim she was the victim of a decade-long abusive relationship with Balwani. The allegations led to the severing of their trials. His trial is slated to begin in 2022.

December 2020: Holmes’ criminal trial delayed til 2021

Initially set to begin in July 2020, Holmes’ criminal trial is further delayed til July 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

March 2021: Holmes’ pregnancy further delays trial

News surfaces that Holmes’ is expecting her first child, once more further delaying her criminal trial. Holmes’ counsel advised the US government that Holmes is due in July 2021, a court document revealed. She gave birth in July.

Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former chief executive officer of Theranos Inc. (center right), arrives at U.S. federal court in San Jose, California, U.S., on Thursday May 6, 2021. Holmes and her lawyers appeared in-person in the federal court where the Theranos founder and former chief executive officer was scheduled to go to trial in August on charges that the blood-test startup once valued at $9 billion was a fraud. Nina Riggio/Bloomberg/Getty Images

August 2021: Holmes’ criminal trial begins with jury selection

More than 80 potential jurors are brought into a San Jose courtroom for questioning over the course of two days to determine if they are fit to serve as impartial, fair jurors for the criminal trial of Holmes. A jury of seven men and five women is selected, with five alternatives.

January 2022: Holmes found guilty on four of 11 federal charges

Holmes is found guilty of one count of conspiracy to defraud investors as well as three wire fraud counts tied to specific investors. She is found not guilty on three additional charges concerning defrauding patients and one charge of conspiracy to defraud patients. The jury returns no verdict on three of the charges concerning defrauding investors. Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count.

Holmes’s sentencing date is set for late September to allow for the completion of Balwani’s trial. In the meantime, Holmes remains free on a $500,000 bond secured by property.

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., left center, departs from federal court with, from left, husband Billy Evans, parents Noel Holmes and Christian Holmes IV in San Jose, California, U.S., on Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

March 2022: After Hulu miniseries debuts, Balwani’s criminal trial kicks off

“The Dropout,” a scripted miniseries about Theranos produced by ABC, debuts on Hulu. Amanda Seyfried stars as Holmes and Naveen Andrews plays Balwani. Their romantic and professional relationship features prominently in the show.

Following delays due to Holmes’ prolonged trial then a surge of Covid-19, jury selection for Balwani’s trial gets underway. On March 22, opening arguments are held and the government’s first witness, a former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, is called to the stand.

July 2022: Balwani guilty of federal fraud

After four full days of deliberations, a jury finds Balwani guilty of ten counts of federal wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Like Holmes, Balwani faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count of wire fraud and each conspiracy count.

Fact check: Bill Gates has given over $50 billion to charitable causes

Corrections & clarifications: This story has been updated to reflect Melinda Gates also founded the "Giving Pledge" and to clarify the terms of the pledge.

The claim: Bill Gates has given over $50 billion to charity

Bill Gates is a consistent target of conspiracy theories, many becoming especially heightened amid the coronavirus pandemic. While the tech billionaire remains the target of scorn and suspicion online, others defend Gates, citing his history of charitable contributions.

One viral post imagines Gates’ view of the current conspiracies, writing that the billionaire has spent “30 years" of his life and "$50 billion" of his net worth "supporting humanitarian causes.”

The post, which has garnered 36,000 shares and 20,000 comments, criticizes conspiracy theorists in harsh terms for their claims, asserting that Gates has "arguably" done “more to better life on earth for humanity than any other human being to ever live.”

Gates is a noted philanthropist and has pledged a significant amount of money to research and charitable causes during the coronavirus pandemic. He has given more than $50 billion to charity since 1994. However, his wealth has grown even faster than he has donated money.

As of June 2020, Gates’ net worth was estimated at roughly than $110 billion, according to Forbes.

More:Bill Gates is not secretly plotting microchips in a coronavirus vaccine. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are dangerous for everyone.

Bill Gates, philanthropist

Bill Gates, who has been one of the wealthiest men in the world for decades, made his fortune as the co-founder of Microsoft. The company, which was a key player in the personal computer revolution in the 1990s, eventually became a corporate behemoth, and Gates became a household name as a tech titan and business magnate.

Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO in January 2000, shifting his attention to philanthropy and other assorted projects. In March 2020, Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board, though he maintains about 1.3% of shares in the company.

In 2010, Bill and Melinda Gates, alongside billionaire investor Warren Buffett, founded the “Giving Pledge,” a movement encouraging other billionaires to donate most of their wealth to charity either during their lifetimes or after their deaths. The voluntary group now includes more than 200 families and individuals from more than 20 countries.

More:Fact check: Bill Gates did not craft contact tracing bill

Bill and Melinda Gates have given $45.5 billion to charitable causes, including the eponymously named Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, since 1994, CNBC reported, citing the Chronicle of Philanthropy. In 2019, the couple donated $589 million to charity, making them the seventh most philanthropic people last year.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Gates family has pledged billions of dollars in donations and funding for efforts to fight the virus. Some of these efforts have come under scrutiny, both from regulators and conspiracy theorists who assert that Gates has malicious intentions behind the giving.

Despite these significant contributions and pledges, Gates remains one of the wealthiest people in the world. From 2000 to 2007, Bill Gates was the richest man in the world, and rotated that title with Buffett and Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim from 2008 to 2013. In 2018, Gates lost the title to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Gates remains the second-richest man in the world, according to Forbes.

Valuing Gates' fortune

Like many high net-worth individuals, Gates manages his wealth through an investment and holding company known as Cascade Investment LLC. The company maintains a diverse portfolio of investments and assets that account for more than half of Gates’ wealth.

Gates’ remaining 1% stake in Microsoft as of June is worth more than $7 billion, while the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation maintains over $50 billion in assets that can be counted among the couple’s net worth.

Gates has maintained this fortune both through wealth management as well as investments in the industry that first made him rich: technology. He is not unique among tech billionaires in this way.

“By the end of 2018, tech billionaires’ assets totaled USD 1.3 trillion. Their net wealth has almost doubled over five years, growing by 91.4%,” a 2019 report on global billionaire wealth from the investment bank UBS and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers found.

“Many of their businesses are phenomenal cash generators. Software, internet and electronic equipment billionaires still account for 62.2% of tech wealth,” the report also said; software, internet and electronic equipment are the consumer products which Microsoft dominated under Gates’ leadership and remains a leader in today.

Gates’ wealth is also tied up in luxury assets, which he has purchased over the years. Gates’ home, which he’s dubbed “Xanadu 2.0” as a reference to the movie Citizen Kane, was estimated to be worth $127.48 million in 2017.

Xanadu 2.0 also holds the Gates family’s large car collection and a $130 million art collection including a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript. The family also has a private jet worth almost $20 million and owns a private tropical island in Belize called Grand Bogue Caye, valued at about $25 million.

Our ruling: True

Bill Gates has been a consistent philanthropist for decades. He has remained extremely wealthy while giving away large amounts of his net worth through steady increases in his financial portfolio. We rate the claim that Gates has given $50 billion to charity as TRUE because it is supported by our research.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.

How rich is Donald Trump really? | CNN Politics

CNN —

Earlier this week, Donald Trump sent The New York Times an email. In it, he claimed that he was very rich – pointing to a “June 30, 2014 Statement of Financial Condition” that said he was worth $5.8 billion in the year before he started running for president.

But, as the Times noted, when Trump declared his candidacy in 2015, he said that a “Summary of Net Worth as of June 30, 2014” put his total wealth at $8.7 billion. A month after that, Trump’s campaign put out another statement on his wealth. It read, in part:

“Real estate values in New York City, San Francisco, Miami and many other places where he owns property have gone up considerably during this period of time. His debt is a very small percentage of value, and at very low interest rates. As of this date, Mr. Trump’s net worth is in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS.”

Pinning down how much Trump is actually worth is a bit of a moving target, largely because the former president often exaggerates. Wildly.

As far back as 2012, when Trump was considering a run for president, he spent time making sure everyone knew he was very wealthy.

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“I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” Trump told ABC. “So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.”

When he eventually did announce for president in June 2015, he did so with his wealth front and center. “I’m really rich,” Trump told the crowd. “I have total net worth of $8.73 billion. I’m not doing that to brag. I’m doing that to show that’s the kind of thinking our country needs.”

How rich is Trump, really? It’s a question that has been asked all of his adult life – and one that remains the subject of much debate. The news earlier this week that Mazars, Trump’s former accounting firm, was distancing itself from the veracity of all Trump financial statements between 2011 and 2020 has reignited the conversation over how much the billionaire businessman has – and how much he owes.

That’s sort of hard to tell – primarily because the former president, in a break with tradition, refused to publicly release any of his previous tax returns, insisting that they don’t actually reveal all that much about a person’s financial status. (Fact check: They do.)

That said, Forbes has been closely monitoring Trump’s wealth for a long time now. And, as of September 2021, they say that Trump’s net worth is actually $2.5 billion. The bulk of that wealth is tied up in real estate ($1.1 billion) with his golf clubs and resorts accounting for another $650 million.

According to Forbes’ calculations, Trump’s net worth peaked in 2015, when he was worth $4.5 billion. It steadily declined during his years in the White House, a fact Trump regularly talked about.

“I said to one of my friends, a very wealthy friend, I said, ‘You know, I’ll bet you it cost me $2 or 3 billion and it’s worth every penny of it,’” Trump told Fox News in 2018. “I don’t need the money and it’s worth every penny because I’m doing so much for the country.”

And there was this in 2020: “[It] cost me billions of dollars to be president of the United States.”

He’s not wrong!

The other thing you have to consider when trying to calculate Trump’s actual wealth is his debt obligations. We know, thanks to amazing reporting from The New York Times, which got their hands on years of Trump’s tax returns, that he owes a massive sum – and those debts are coming due in the not-too-distant future.

As David Leonhardt noted in September 2020:

“In the 1990s, Mr. Trump nearly ruined himself by personally guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, and he has since said that he regretted doing so. But he has taken the same step again, his tax records show. He appears to be responsible for loans totaling $421 million, most of which is coming due within four years.”

Trump is also in the midst of a dispute over a $70-million-plus refund he received from the IRS in 2010. (In 2011, the IRS began looking into whether or not Trump actually merited that refund for business losses. The case remains unresolved.)

The extent of Trump’s wealth, like so much in his life, appears to be, at least in part, made up. Or at least heavily exaggerated.

Perhaps the best way to understand Trump’s approach to his wealth – and to life in general – comes from his 1987 book “The Art of the Deal.” Wrote Trump:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

Truthful hyperbole indeed.

Sam Bankman-Fried's $16 billion fortune evaporated in less than a ...

New York CNN Business —

Sam Bankman-Fried woke up on Monday still a billionaire, even as his cryptocurrency empire was beginning to unravel. By Friday, his fortune was completely wiped out.

Based on net worth calculations by Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried was worth about $16 billion at the start of the week. But as his crypto exchange, FTX, collapsed, the value of his assets was reduced to zero in what Bloomberg called “one of history’s greatest-ever destructions of wealth.”

FTX on Friday said it filed for bankruptcy, and Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, resigned as chief executive.

The 30-year-old entrepreneur’s net worth, which was largely tied up in digital assets, peaked at around $26 billion this spring. Over the summer, as crypto prices plummeted, Bankman-Fried emerged as a white knight for the sector, using his FTX exchange and its sister hedge fund, Alameda, to secure lines of credit to crypto companies like BlockFi and Voyager that were at risk of collapsing.

He told Reuters in July that he and FTX still had a “few billion” on hand to shore up other firms and help stabilize the industry.

Bankman-Fried owns about 70% of FTX’s US business, which the index now estimates to be essentially worthless. His stake in online brokerage Robinhood, previously valued at more than $500 million, was removed from Bloomberg’s calculation after news reports said that stake was held through Alameda and may have been used as collateral for loans.

As a follower of “effective altruism,” Bankman-Fried has sought to make as much money as possible in order to give it away. But the fate of his philanthropic endeavors is now in doubt.

On Thursday, the entire staff of the FTX Future Fund, which says it has committed $160 million in grants, publicly quit. In a statement, the five-person team wrote that they “have fundamental questions about the legitimacy and integrity of the business operations that were funding the FTX Foundation and the Future Fund.”

Jeff Bezos for the first time says he will give most of his money to ...

Washington CNN Business —

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos plans to give away the majority of his $124 billion net worth during his lifetime, telling CNN in an exclusive interview he will devote the bulk of his wealth to fighting climate change and supporting people who can unify humanity in the face of deep social and political divisions.

Though Bezos’ vow was light on specifics, this marks the first time he has announced that he plans to give away most of his money. Critics have chided Bezos for not signing the Giving Pledge, a promise by hundreds of the world’s richest people to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.

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In a sit-down interview with CNN’s Chloe Melas on Saturday at his Washington, DC, home, Bezos, speaking alongside his partner, the journalist-turned-philanthropist Lauren Sánchez, said the couple is “building the capacity to be able to give away this money.”

Asked directly by CNN whether he intends to donate the majority of his wealth within his lifetime, Bezos said: “Yeah, I do.”

Bezos said he and Sánchez agreed to their first interview together since they began dating in 2019 to help shine a spotlight on the Bezos Courage and Civility Award, granted this year to musician Dolly Parton.

The 20-minute exchange with Bezos and Sánchez covered a broad range of topics, from Bezos’s views on political dialogue and a possible economic recession to Sánchez’s plan to visit outer space with an all-female crew and her reflections on a flourishing business partnership with Bezos.

Dolly Parton

That working relationship was on display Saturday as Bezos and Sánchez announced a $100 million grant to Parton as part of her Courage and Civility Award. It is the third such award, following similar grants to chef Jose Andrés, who has spent some of the money making meals for Ukrainians — and the climate advocate and CNN contributor Van Jones.

“When you think of Dolly,” said Sánchez in the interview, “Look, everyone smiles, right? She is just beaming with light. And all she wants to do is bring light into other people’s worlds. And so we couldn’t have thought of someone better than to give this award to Dolly, and we know she’s going to do amazing things with it.”

The throughline connecting the Courage and Civility Award grantees, Bezos said, was their capacity to bring many people together to solve large challenges.

“I just feel honored to be able to be a part of what they’re doing for this world,” Bezos told CNN.

Unity, Bezos said, is a trait that will be necessary to confront climate change and one that he repeatedly invoked as he blasted politicians and social media for amplifying division.

How to give it away

But the couple’s biggest challenge may be figuring out how to distribute Bezos’ vast fortune. Bezos declined to identify a specific percentage or to provide concrete details on where it would likely be spent.

Despite being the fourth-wealthiest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Bezos has refrained from setting a target amount to give away in his lifetime.

Bezos has committed $10 billion over 10 years, or about 8% of his current net worth, to the Bezos Earth Fund, which Sánchez co-chairs. Among its priorities are reducing the carbon footprint of construction-grade cement and steel; pushing financial regulators to consider climate-related risks; advancing data and mapping technologies to monitor carbon emissions; and building natural, plant-based carbon sinks on a large scale.

Though Bezos is now Amazon’s (AMZN) executive chair and not its CEO — he stepped down from that role in 2021 — he is still involved in the greening of the company. Amazon is one of more than 300 companies that have pledged to reduce their carbon footprint by 2040 according to the principles of the Paris Climate Agreement, Bezos said, though Amazon’s (AMZN) footprint grew by 18% in 2021, reflecting a pandemic-driven e-commerce boom. Amazon’s (AMZN) reckoning with its own effect on the climate mirrors its outsized impact on everything from debates about unionization to antitrust policy, where the company has attracted an enormous level of scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers, and civil society groups.

Bezos compared his philanthropic strategy to his years-long effort constructing a titanic engine of e-commerce and cloud computing that has made him one of the most powerful people in the world.

“The hard part is figuring out how to do it in a levered way,” he said, implying that even as he gives away his billions, he is still looking to maximize his return. “It’s not easy. Building Amazon was not easy. It took a lot of hard work, a bunch of very smart teammates, hard-working teammates, and I’m finding — and I think Lauren is finding the same thing — that charity, philanthropy, is very similar.”

“There are a bunch of ways that I think you could do ineffective things, too,” he added. “So you have to think about it carefully and you have to have brilliant people on the team.”

Bezos’ methodical approach to giving stands in sharp contrast to that of his ex-wife, the philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, who recently gave away nearly $4 billion to 465 organizations in the span of less than a year.

The economic downturn

While Bezos and Sánchez plot out their plans for Bezos’ immense wealth, many people of more modest means are bracing for what economists fear may be an extended economic downturn.

Last month, Bezos tweeted a warning to his followers on Twitter, recommending that they “batten down the hatches.”

The advice was meant for business owners and consumers alike, Bezos said in the interview, suggesting that individuals should consider putting off buying big ticket items they’ve been eyeing — or that companies should slow their acquisitions and capital expenditures.

“Take some risk off the table,” Bezos said. “Keep some dry powder on hand…. Just a little bit of risk reduction could make the difference for that small business, if we do get into even more serious economic problems. You’ve got to play the probabilities a little bit.”

Many may be feeling the pinch now, he added, but argued that as an optimist he believes the American Dream “is and will be even more attainable in the future” — projecting that within Bezos’ lifetime, space travel could become broadly accessible to the public.

Bezos and Sánchez’s partnership

Sánchez said the couple make “really great teammates,” though she laughed, “We can be kind of boring,” Sánchez said. Bezos smiled and replied, “Never boring.”

Sánchez, the founder of Black Ops Aviation, the first female-owned and operated aerial film and production company is a trained helicopter pilot. She said in the interview that they’ve both taken turns in the driver’s seat.

Bezos has credited his own journey to space for helping to inspire his push to fight climate change. Now, it is Sánchez’s turn.

Sánchez told CNN she anticipates venturing into orbit herself sometime in 2023. And while she did not directly address who will be joining her — quickly ruling out Bezos as a crewmate — she said simply: “It’ll be a great group of females.”

Washington’s NFL team

Bezos may be adding NFL owner to his resume. CNN recently reported that Bezos and Jay-Z are in talks on a potential joint bid on the Washington Commanders.

It is not clear if the two have yet spoken with Dan Snyder and his wife, Tanya, the current owners of the NFL team, about the possibility.

But during the interview on Saturday, Melas asked Bezos if the speculation was true.

“Yes, I’ve heard that buzz,” Bezos said with a smile.

Sánchez chimed in with a laugh, “I do like football. I’m just going to throw that out there for everyone.”

Bezos added, “I grew up in Houston, Texas, and I played football growing up as a kid … and it is my favorite sport … so we’ll just have to wait and see.”

– CNN’s Chloe Melas contributed to this report

Kylie Jenner not a billionaire, Forbes says, taking away her ranking

Kylie Jenner's status as a billionaire has been called into question by Forbes in a story that also raises questions about the magazine’s ability to accurately assess the finances of celebrities.

Forbes, known for its billionaire rankings, said it no longer considers the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner family to be a billionaire, a status it first conferred in March 2019.

The magazine on Friday published the results of an investigation into Jenner's finances, saying she and her family provided misleading information about her wealth. It now estimates her net worth at just under $900 million.

In its investigation Friday, Forbes says the Kardashians and Jenners have spent years fighting for higher spots on its annual wealth and celebrity earnings lists.

Not a billionaire but want to be?:Money tips and advice delivered right to your inbox. Sign up here

Jenner's brother-in-law and rapper Kanye West was included on the Forbes list in April.

USA TODAY reached out to Jenner's reps for comment on the report. Jenner took to Twitter, tweeting Friday that the Forbes article had "a number of inaccurate statements and unproven assumptions" and she "never asked for any title or tried to lie my way there EVER. period."

'Unproven assumptions':Kylie Jenner responds to Forbes report on 'inflating' billionaire status

Future trillionaire? Jeff Bezos could become world's first trillionaire, and many people aren't happy about it

Last November, Jenner sold a $600 million stake in her cosmetic company Kylie Cosmetics to Coty Inc, a beauty company that owns CoverGirl, Tiffany & Co. and Balenciaga, among other notable beauty and fashion brands. A news release at the time said Coty would own 51% of Jenner's company.

Forbes called the sale one of "the greatest celebrity cashouts of all time" and said "the transaction seemed to confirm what Kylie had been saying all along" and what it declared in the March 2019 story. Coty officials declined to comment.

Jenner pocketed an estimated $340 million, after tax, from the sale, Forbes reported, but said based on filings and the impact of COVID-19 on beauty stocks and consumer spending that Jenner is no longer believed to be a billionaire.

Forbes also said in its story that the family created "tax returns that were likely forged," which Jenner’s attorney Michael Kump said in a statement to People magazine was "unequivocally false."

"Forbes’ accusation that Kylie and her accountants 'forged tax returns' is unequivocally false and we are demanding that Forbes immediately and publicly retract that and other statements," Kump told People.

To some experts, Forbes' about-face may put the publications' popular rankings into question.

James Warren, executive editor of NewsGuard, which rates the credibility of news and information sites, told USA TODAY the news speaks to the importance of verifying information.

"The Kardashian claim was and remains the sort that's easy to make, yet hard to verify,” said Warren, a former Chicago Tribune managing editor. “But it requires verification because some people use 'billionaire' as a credential of grand distinction, a sort of Harvard degree, even if one measured in money rather than academic achievement.”

Rita McGrath, who is professor of management at Columbia Business School, said the story puts Forbes in a "tough spot."

“I do think a magazine like Forbes has a certain responsibility to present factual data if they are going to claim to be that source,” McGrath said. "I think maybe a higher level of scrutiny might be merited.”

Forbes is not the only publication that ranks billionaires; Bloomberg News has its Billionaires Index, which is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires.

Forbes spokeswoman Christina Vega told USA TODAY that this new investigation shows the publication's commitment to "uncovering new information year after year" and "willingness to set the record straight when we do get new information."

Vega said Forbes' "investigation was triggered by newly-filed documents that revealed glaring discrepancies between information privately supplied to journalists and information publicly supplied to shareholders."

"There have been rare instances in the history of the list in which people have blatantly lied to us in efforts to move their fortunes up or down," Vega said in a statement to USA TODAY. "We try to spot those cases as soon as possible and report on them immediately to our readers."

Contributing: Sara M. Moniuszko

Follow USA TODAY reporter Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko

Larry Ellison: Oracle billionaire's $173M estate sets Florida record

PALM BEACH, Fla. – Billionaire Larry Ellison, who was recently ranked by Forbes as the world’s eighth-richest person, dropped $173 million of his fortune to buy a Florida compound in Manalapan, a wealthy town south of Palm Beach. The transaction marks the largest residential sale ever in Florida.

Ellison bought the ocean-to-lake estate – and part of nearby Bird Island – from a trust controlled by a fellow software billionaire, Jim Clark. In all, the estate and its island measure more than 22 acres.

Ellison used a limited liability company to buy the estate in Manalapan, according to the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Network.

The land has been in the hands of the extremely wealthy for years. Clark purchased the property in 2021 from the billionaire Ziff family, which made its fortune in publishing and investments.

Historically known as Gemini, the estate is bisected by a coastal road. The two sections of the main house – one facing the lake and the other, the ocean – are linked by a series of tunnels beneath the street, including one that serves as a foyer and art gallery.

With dense vegetation, the property has about 1,200 feet of beach frontage and about 1,300 feet of waterfront on the irregularly shaped side facing the Intracoastal Waterway.

Together, the main residence and several outbuildings offer nearly 85,000 square feet of living space, inside and out, with 33 bedrooms, 34 bathrooms and 13 powder rooms.

The park-like estate includes a PGA-standard golf practice area, a regulation tennis court, a half basketball court, a freshwater pond, an 18-hole miniature golf course, a boat dock, a bird sanctuary and a butterfly garden. All of the those items were in place when Clark’s trust bought the property.

So who is Larry Ellison? Here’s a look at the billionaire.

How rich is Larry Ellison?

On June 22, the day the deed recorded for the Florida sale, Forbes estimated the 77-year-old’s net worth at $93.6 billion.

How did Larry Ellison get his fortune?

Ellison co-founded Oracle Corp. with two partners in Santa Clara, California, in 1977. Today, the software powerhouse bills itself as the world’s largest database-management company. Ellison spent 37 years as CEO and still holds the titles of chairman and chief technology officer at the company, which is headquartered in Austin, Texas. His ownership stake in the company is about 35 percent, according to Forbes.

Previously:As he steps down from Oracle, here are Larry Ellison's titanic moments

Larry Ellison’s ties to Tesla

Among Ellison’s most well-publicized stock purchases, he invested heavily in his billionaire friend Elon Musk’s Tesla and joined the company’s board in 2018. This month, Tesla reported that Ellison would be stepping down from the board.

Did Larry Ellison go to college?

Yes, but he didn’t graduate. He dropped out of the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, according to Bloomberg and other published reports.

Where’s Larry Ellison from and where does he live?

A native New Yorker from The Bronx, Ellison has lived in the Chicago area and California. But he has said his primary home is on the island of Lanai in Hawaii. He reportedly paid $300 million for almost all of that island 10 years ago. He has also bought homes in Newport, Rhode Island, and California.

Larry Ellison’s politics: Report ties him to post-election strategy call with Trump

On May 20, The Washington Post and other outlets reported that Ellison, who has supported former President Donald Trump and conservative causes, took part in a call on Nov. 14, 2020, with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and others “that focused on strategies for contesting the legitimacy of the vote” in the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential elections. The Post cited court documents and “a participant” as sources.

The call, the Post reported, is “the first known example of a technology industry titan joining powerful figures in conservative politics, media and law to strategize about Trump’s post-loss options.”

Others on the call included Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump attorney Jay Sekulow and attorney James Bopp Jr., who represented True the Vote, a nonprofit group that has “promoted disputed claims of widespread voter fraud,” according to the Post. Ellison and Oracle did not respond to the Post for a request for comment, the Post reported.

Larry Ellison's charitable efforts

Among his philanthropic initiatives, he gave $200 million to fund cancer-treatment research at the University of Southern California in 2016. The Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine in Los Angles is named for him.

Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. Follow him on Twitter: @PBDN_Hofheinz.

Insys founder and Arizona billionaire John Kapoor arrested in opioid ...

PHOENIX — One of Arizona's richest men was arrested early Thursday and charged with leading a conspiracy to profit by using bribes and fraud to market a powerful opioid narcotic, sometimes to inappropriate patients.

John Kapoor, 74, founder and majority owner of Chandler, Ariz.-based Insys Therapeutics Inc., was arrested and charged with the illegal distribution of a fentanyl spray intended for cancer patients and for violating anti-kickback laws, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston.

The company's medication, Subsys, contains a narcotic that's 80 times more powerful than morphine.

The initial success of that medication turned Insys into one of Arizona's hottest stocks ever, but that was followed by a sharp downturn as the company's profits and revenue were scaled back as the investigations widened.

Kapoor ranked sixth last year on Forbes' list of wealthiest Arizonans with a net worth of $2.1 billion, but he dropped off this year's list owing to the declining stock price of Insys, in which he is a controlling shareholder.

Kapoor, who also served as the company's former executive chairman and CEO, was to appear in federal court in Phoenix on Thursday and in U.S. District Court in Boston at a later date.

More:Exclusive: Trump to order public health emergency for opioids, a partial measure to fight drug epidemic

More:Opioid crisis has a new leading killer: fentanyl

More:FDA chief supports opioid prescription limits, regrets agency's prior inaction

The indictment unsealed in Boston includes additional allegations against several former Insys executives and managers who were initially indicted in December. The indictment names Kapoor and former CEO Michael Babich.

The others named in the indictment are Alec Burlakoff, Insys' former vice president of sales; Richard Simon, former national director of sales; former regional sales directors Sunrise Lee and Joseph Rowan; and the company's former vice president of managed markets, Michael Gurry.

Babich, 40, and Gurry, 53, are Scottsdale, Ariz., residents.

The officials are charged with conspiring to bribe medical practitioners in various states, many of whom operated pain clinics, to get them to prescribe Subsys, according to the announcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office. In exchange for bribes and kickbacks, the practitioners wrote large numbers of prescriptions for the patients, most of whom were not diagnosed with cancer, according to the allegations.

The indictment also alleges that Kapoor and the former executives conspired to mislead and defraud health insurers that were reluctant to approve payment for the drug when it was prescribed for non-cancer patients. They pursued this goal by obtaining prior authorization directly from insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

“In the midst of a nationwide opioid epidemic that has reached crisis proportions, Mr. Kapoor and his company stand accused of bribing doctors to overprescribe a potent opioid and committing fraud on insurance companies solely for profit,” said Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb in a statement.

“Today's arrest and charges reflect our ongoing efforts to attack the opioid crisis from all angles. We must hold the industry and its leadership accountable — just as we would the cartels or a street-level drug dealer.”

Insys executives created a corporate culture that utilized "deception and bribery as an acceptable business practice, deceiving patients and conspiring with doctors and insurers,” said Harold Shaw, a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in a statement.

Insys stock was sharply lower Thursday morning, trading down about 11% at $6.62 a share.

Reach the reporter at russ.wiles@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8616.

Exclusive: Trump's 3,500 lawsuits unprecedented for a presidential ...

Nick Penzenstadler, and Susan Page

USA TODAY

Donald Trump is a fighter, famous for legal skirmishes over everything from his golf courses to his tax bills to Trump University. But until now, it hasn’t been clear precisely how litigious he is and what that might portend for a Trump presidency.

An exclusive USA TODAY analysis of legal filings across the United States finds that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and his businesses have been involved in at least 3,500 legal actions in federal and state courts during the past three decades. They range from skirmishes with casino patrons to million-dollar real estate suits to personal defamation lawsuits.

The sheer volume of lawsuits is unprecedented for a presidential nominee. No candidate of a major party has had anything approaching the number of Trump’s courtroom entanglements.

Just since he announced his candidacy a year ago, at least 70 new cases have been filed, about evenly divided between lawsuits filed by him and his companies and those filed against them. And the records review found at least 50 civil lawsuits remain open even as he moves toward claiming the nomination at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in seven weeks. On Tuesday, court documents were released in one of the most dramatic current cases, filed in California by former students accusing Trump University of fraudulent and misleading behavior.

The legal actions provide clues to the leadership style the billionaire businessman would bring to bear as commander in chief. He sometimes responds to even small disputes with overwhelming legal force. He doesn’t hesitate to deploy his wealth and legal firepower against adversaries with limited resources, such as homeowners. He sometimes refuses to pay real estate brokers, lawyers and other vendors.

As he campaigns, Trump often touts his skills as a negotiator. The analysis shows that lawsuits are one of his primary negotiating tools. He turns to litigation to distance himself from failing projects that relied on the Trump brand to secure investments. As USA TODAY previously reported, he also uses the legal system to haggle over his property tax bills. His companies have been involved in more than 100 tax disputes, and the New York State Department of Finance has obtained liens on Trump properties for unpaid tax bills at least three dozen times.

Exclusive: More than 100 lawsuits, disputes, tied to Trump and his companies

And despite his boasts on the campaign trail that he “never” settles lawsuits, for fear of encouraging more, he and his businesses have settled with plaintiffs in at least 100 cases reviewed by USA TODAY. Most involve people who say they were physically injured at Trump properties, with settlements that range as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, said in an interview that the number and tenor of the court cases is the “cost of doing business” and on par with other companies of a similar size. "I think we have far less litigation of companies of our size," he said.

However, even by those measures, the number of cases in which Trump is involved is extraordinary. For comparison, USA TODAY analyzed the legal involvement for five top real-estate business executives: Edward DeBartolo, shopping-center developer and former San Francisco 49ers owner; Donald Bren, Irvine Company chairman and owner; Stephen Ross, Time Warner Center developer; Sam Zell, Chicago real-estate magnate; and Larry Silverstein, a New York developer famous for his involvement in the World Trade Center properties.

To maintain an apples-to-apples comparison, only actions that used the developers' names were included. The analysis found Trump has been involved in more legal skirmishes than all five of the others — combined.

The USA TODAY analysis included an examination of legal actions for and against Trump and the more than 500 businesses he lists on the personal financial disclosure he filed with the Federal Election Commission. USA TODAY also reviewed five depositions in which Trump sat for 22 hours of sworn testimony. This report is based on those legal filings as well as interviews with dozens of his legal adversaries.

A handful of the ongoing cases involve local or state government entities, with the possibility of personal legal disputes between the president of the United States and other branches of government if Trump is elected. For instance, the Trump team has filed a lawsuit seeking a state ethics investigation of the New York attorney general. The suit was filed in response to an ongoing fraud investigation into Trump University by the attorney general, an elected state official.

Trump, New York attorney general spar again over Trump U.

And at a campaign rally in San Diego last Friday, Trump railed against a federal judge overseeing an ongoing lawsuit against Trump University. Trump said Judge Gonzalo Curiel "happens to be, we believe Mexican," and called him a "hater of Donald Trump" who "railroaded" him. Born in Indiana, Curiel was appointed to the federal bench by President Obama. The judge on Tuesday unsealed hundreds of pages of documents in the case.

The trial is set for November — just after Election Day.

Trump’s history of legal actions provides clues about his style as a leader and manager. While he is quick to take credit for anything associated with his name, he is just as quick to distance himself from failures and to place responsibility on others. In one lawsuit — filed against him by condo owners who wanted their money back for a Fort Lauderdale condo that was never built — he testified in a sworn deposition: “Well, the word ‘developing,’ it doesn't mean that we're the developers.”

At times, he and his companies refuse to pay even relatively small bills. An engineering firm and a law firm are among several who filed suits against Trump companies saying they weren't paid for their work. In a 2011 deposition tied to a dispute over his deal with Van Heusen menswear, he said he abruptly decided not to sign a check to a firm that helped broker the deal, after 11 consecutive quarterly payments, because "I don't feel that these people did very much, if anything, with respect to this deal.”

The number of lawsuits raises questions about potential conflicts and complications if Trump does win the White House. Dozens of cases remain unresolved, about half in which he is the plaintiff. It raises the possibility of individuals being sued by the president of the United States, or suing him, in non-governmental disputes.

Under the law, Trump wouldn’t get special advantages as the plaintiff — or protections as a defendant. Under long-standing conflict-of-interest rules, as a plaintiff he couldn’t improperly benefit from governmental knowledge. He also wouldn’t get immunity from civil litigation that stemmed from events prior to taking office.

How USA TODAY NETWORK gathered Trump court files

Together, the lawsuits help address this question: How would Trump’s record in business translate into leading the most powerful government on the globe — a task that involves managing a $4 trillion annual budget, overseeing 1.8 million civilian federal employees and commanding the most powerful armed forces in the world?

While leaders who had business careers sometimes have been elected to the White House — oilmen George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, for instance, and mining engineer Herbert Hoover — the jobs have some fundamental differences, political scientists and presidential historians say. A president can't rule by fiat, as some CEOs do. And getting things done in government often involves building coalitions among legislators and foreign leaders who have their own priorities and agendas.

“He’s operating as his own boss and a CEO-on-steroids mentality, where you snap a finger and things get done,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who has written biographies of Franklin Roosevelt and Teddy Roosevelt and edited Ronald Reagan’s diaries. “But a lot of good governance is on learning how to build proper coalitions and how to have patience with the glacial pace of government, and you’re forced to abide by laws at all times. "

Brinkley sees "a lot of warning signs about having someone of Trump’s temperament and professional disposition being the commander-in-chief.”

To be sure, likely Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has had her own legal challenges, including an ongoing FBI investigation and civil lawsuits into her exclusive use of an email server while secretary of State. When husband Bill Clinton was president, she was involved in investigations by special counsels looking into the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas and other controversies. None resulted in legal charges against her.

During her time as first lady, U.S. senator from New York and secretary of State, Clinton has been named in more than 900 lawsuits, mostly as a defendant, a review of state and federal court records finds. More than a third of the lawsuits were filed by federal prisoners, political activists or other citizens seeking redress from the government by suing a list of high-ranking officials.

The USA TODAY analysis identified at least 3,500 legal actions involving Trump. Reporters reviewed thousands of pages of records collected electronically and in person from courts in 33 states over three months, read more than 20 hours of depositions and interviewed dozens of litigants.

Among those cases with a clear resolution, Trump's side was the apparent victor in 451 and the loser in 38. In about 500 cases, judges dismissed plaintiffs' claims against Trump. In hundreds more, cases ended with the available public record unclear about the resolution.

Close to half the court cases — about 1,600 — involved lawsuits against gamblers who had credit at Trump-connected casinos and failed to pay their debts. About 100 additional disputes centered on other issues at the casinos. Trump and his enterprises have been named in almost 700 personal-injury claims and about 165 court disputes with government agencies.

Dozens dealt with the bankruptcy proceedings of Trump's companies, and dozens more involved plaintiffs' lawsuits against Trump businesses that judges terminated because the Trump companies targeted had gone bankrupt.

They include Trump's ongoing suit against the town of Palm Beach over airplane noise near his Mar-a-Lago Club and an earlier lawsuit against the town over an 80-foot flag pole. Trump's team argued in court that a smaller flag would understate his patriotism, but he eventually settled with town officials, agreeing among other concessions to lower the pole by 10 feet.

There also are disputes with local governments from New York to Florida to Nevada over the size of his property-tax bills.

The terms of most of the 100 settlements that Trump and his businesses reached with plaintiffs have not been disclosed. In about 60 additional cases, those sued by the Trump side have settled with him.

A few have become fodder on the campaign trail, including two breach-of-contract lawsuits he filed against restaurateurs in connection with Trump's development of the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. The businesses said they backed out of deals with Trump because of his derogatory comments about Mexicans. Both lawsuits are pending.

The luxury Trump hotel will have a prime view of the Inaugural Parade next January.

Review of thousands of legal actions show that Trump is fiercely protective of his brand, quick to distance himself from deals that struggle, willing to deploy outsized resources against adversaries and sometimes prone to micro-management, even in disputes that involve relatively small amounts of money. Those approaches, however appropriate in a business setting, may not translate to a political one, especially at the level of the White House.

Among the details:

• Trump distances himself from deals that sour.

When projects struggle, Trump doesn’t hesitate to cut ties, even those that relied on his name to secure investments. That was the case in condo projects that were never completed in Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Panama and Baja, Mexico.

Condo buyers who sued to get their deposits back often said they believed Trump was a full partner in the buildings. Trump was shielded by disclaimers in sales agreements explaining his branding-only role, though plaintiffs and their lawyers argued in court that fine print didn’t sync with marketing materials that made it appear these were Trump properties.

In depositions and court filings in the condo cases and similar branding deals, Trump's team appears to try to have it both ways in depicting his involvement. On one hand, Trump contends deep influence over even the smallest details to ensure Trump-branded products and developments are up to his standard, and he places high importance on the influence of his marketing muscle in such deals — usually as the lead name, face and voice behind a project.

On the other hand, his team argues in court that he's not liable for the deals that fail because he's simply lent his name.

Trump himself walked lawyers through the difference between a brander and a developer in a 2013 deposition in one of the Fort Lauderdale condo cases.

“Well, the word ‘developing,’ it doesn't mean that we're the developers,” Trump said, arguing he’s not accountable when a project he lends just his name to goes under. “We worked on the documents, we worked on the room sizes and the things, but we didn't give out the contracts, we didn't get the financing, we weren't the developer, but we did work with the developer.”

In lawsuits over his Trump University, he testified that he had never met instructors who were described in the university’s promotional materials as being “handpicked” by him. “It depends on the definition of what that means, handpicked,” Trump said during an exchange with a lawyer in a sworn deposition last December.

When attorneys representing plaintiffs pointed out some instructors had criminal pasts and had been accused of berating seniors who signed up for the program, Trump replied: “In every business, people slip through the cracks.”

Florida attorney Sherri Simpson, who defends homeowners in foreclosure actions, said she signed up for Trump University classes because she hoped to capitalize on low prices during the housing downturn. She wanted to turn to a trusted real-estate name to learn how.

“I’m aggravated that I lost all that money,” she said in an interview. “He promised to hire the best, to handpick the instructors, make sure everyone affiliated with the program was the best. But he didn’t do that.”

• Trump is willing to spend large sums on small claims.

No detail is too small for a Trump suit, and he often brings to bear overwhelming legal resources that enable him to outlast his adversaries.

In February, he filed five lawsuits against eight neighbors of his Doral golf club in Miami for $15,000 in damages to reimburse him for "vandalizing" or "destroying" expensive areca palms and other plants his groundskeepers installed between their homes and the course. Trump's staff says the foliage was planted to block golfers' views of the houses; the homeowners say the trees blocked their views of the course. All five cases are pending.

“No other developer put so many resources in trying to fight claims brought by the plaintiffs,” said Jared Beck, a Miami attorney who has represented dozens of clients in lawsuits against developers in South Florida. He said none has fought with the tenacity of Trump, citing a “mismatch of resources” that often works in Trump’s favor.

Beck is now appealing to the Florida Supreme Court a case that dates to 2008 in which he represented a group of people who invested in condos in a failed development in Fort Lauderdale to which Trump licensed his name. “He is willing to go to the mat and has practically unlimited resources.”

• Trump fiercely protects the monetary value of “Trump” as a brand name.

Trump publicly has placed the value of his licensed real estate and other branding deals at $3.3 billion, though Forbes and other analysts question whether the figure is inflated. His moniker drives the value of his licensing deals, which now make up an important arm of his business model.

In one case, a South Florida developer hired experts who testified that having Trump's name attached to their proposed condominium development boosted the condos' value by at least $200 per square foot. The swanky seaside complex was only partially built, prompting some condo buyers to file a lawsuit against Trump and the developers seeking to recover their deposits. The developers had paid to license Trump’s brand, allowing them to use Trump’s name, his image and his reputation to help them sell units.

Trump has attempted to pull out or distance himself from similar licensing deals, real estate and otherwise, if he feels the situation is hurting his brand. He also goes to court to collect royalties and other fees he says he's owed on those same kinds of deals.

“Anything I put my name to is very important,” Trump said in a 2010 deposition tied to a failed real-estate development in Tampa licensed to carry Trump’s “mark," as he calls it. "If I allow my name to be used, whether it’s a partnership or whether it is a licensing deal, they are all very important to me.”

Trump sued for $4.5 million over unpaid royalties after a company that had been paying him to call its liquor Trump Vodka fell on hard times during the economic downturn, hurting sales of pricier spirits. The company stopped making its licensing payments, and Trump terminated the deal and sued to recoup what he was owed. He won a judgment for the amount, though it's unclear whether he ever collected from the troubled company.

And he has been aggressive in suing unrelated companies that were using his name without permission. He won rulings over attempts to market Trump’s Best Coffee, a series of websites with names like trumpabudhabi.com and trumpbeijing.com, and a marketing agency calling itself Trump Your Competition.

Trump’s general counsel, Garten, defended the number of lawsuits. “Our philosophy is that we are a company of principle,” he said. “When we believe we are in the right, we are going to pursue the matter to the end. If that requires that we go to trial and present evidence to a jury, we are prepared to do so. We are not going to cave to pressure.”

But experts in the presidency and business say Trump’s record, including in courtroom disputes, raise questions about whether he has exhibited the leadership qualities that have distinguished the nation’s most successful presidents.

“Somebody like Lyndon Johnson was a guy who woke up in the morning studying the decisions and the hopes and the strengths and the weaknesses of all the people he had to influence,” said Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and author of Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time. “For that, you need two traits I think Trump lacks: Number one, an attention to detail, and number two, you have to subordinate your own ego. I’ve seen nothing from Trump that suggests he has that capacity, and government is the art of compromise.”

Trump’s lack of government experience was a political advantage during the GOP primaries, reinforcing his status as an outsider vowing to shake up a dysfunctional Washington. But it threatens to be a liability in the general election. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week, six in 10 voters said they had reservations about or were uncomfortable with Trump’s lack of experience in government or the military.

Even so, some of those who have sued Trump, been sued by him or otherwise been caught up in his legal wake, say they still may vote for him in November.

Philip Monnin represented his daughter, Miss Pennsylvania contestant Sheena Monnin, in a defamation suit Trump filed after she posted on Facebook that she thought the 2012 Miss USA Pageant was “rigged.” An arbitration ruling upheld by a federal judge ordered her to pay $5 million in damages, although she and Trump eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed lesser amount. Monnin, who lives in Michigan, said the suit demonstrated Trump’s bullying tactics and attempts to intimidate legal opponents.

But he doesn’t rule out voting for Trump for president. “Both sides have failed to bring satisfactory candidates,” he said in an interview. “I don’t think any of us in the family has decided what to do, and we have a lot of time to consider how to cast our votes.”

Contributing: David McKay Wilson, Karen Yi, John Kelly and Kevin McCoy

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