Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' criminal trial begins<br />.<br />On August 31, jury selection for the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes begins in San Jose, California.<br />ABC reports that the news comes just days after Holmes accused her former boyfriend and Theranos COO, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani of abuse.<br />According to the Northern District of California United States Attorney's Office, Holmes is charged with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud stemming from a , "multi-million-dollar scheme to defraud investors, and a separate scheme to defraud doctors and patients.".<br />In 2014, Elizabeth Holmes founded a company valued at $9 billion that would purportedly bring about a revolution in the diagnosis of disease.<br />With a few drops of blood, Theranos promised that its Edison test could detect conditions such as cancer and diabetes. .<br />Major investors from Henry Kissinger to Rupert Murdoch backed the startup company.<br />But by 2015, the seams were coming apart, and within a year, Ms Holmes was exposed as a fake. The technology she touted didn't work at all, and by 2018 the company she founded had collapsed.<br />Ms Holmes, now 37, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty of the 12 charges of fraud against her. She has never previously told her side of the story.<br />Her trial which begins next month, US v Elizabeth Holmes, et al, will be closely watched and she is expected to plead not guilty.<br />The BBC reports that Holmes' lawyers will now argue that her ex-boyfriend and business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, sexually abused and emotionally controlled her at the time of the alleged crimes.<br />Mr Balwani who faces the same fraud charges, called the claims "outrageous".<br />It will be up to a jury to decide with what sympathy or harshness to judge the woman who fooled everyone from statesmen to secretaries
