World News for Students of English

02-03-2022 15:00

Elizabeth Holmes is the founder of the failed blood-testing company Theranos. She is facing decades in prison; a court found her guilty of conspiring to rob her investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Holmes was the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, and media often described her as the next Steve Jobs. Her revolutionary medical testing method was easier, quicker, and cheaper because it required only a little bit of blood from a person’s finger that could be tested for lots of diseases.

However, people found the testing needed more blood, and some people allegedly had incorrect test results. Holmes had attracted a lot of investors, and she’d received medical and financial support.

In 2015, journalists first questioned the reliability of the tests, and investors found Theranos maybe was doing something else. Holmes is now a convicted felon, and she’s guilty of four conspiracy and fraud charges.

Difficult words: conspire (to make secret plans to do something bad or illegal), felon (a person who’s committed a serious crime), fraud (the crime of getting money or financial benefits by a trick or by lying).

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