In the summer of 2014, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was at the height of her power. The media and her cadre of distinguished supporters were hailing the self-made billionaire as the next Steve Jobs, someone set to revolutionize the world of medicine with a device that could run hundreds of blood testsâall with the prick of a finger.
But behind this dazzling facade, all was not well. As federal prosecutors would later allege, the Silicon Valley tech firm, its evangelizing inventor, and her one-time boyfriend were peddling snake oil: Theranosâ device simply did not work.
Now Holmes, 37, is about to stand trial, and ex-Theranos employees are watching closely. Some describe themselves as survivors of a startup ruled by paranoia, subterfuge, bullying, and retaliation. And they want Holmes to pay.
âWe knew Theranos to be a deceptive organization, but we had to chill out and not say anything about it because they would make our lives difficult,â said Justin Maxwell, who worked at the company as a designer from 2007 to 2008.
âThere are some people who probably had to go to therapy for this, and thereâs one person on the team who died from suicide,â Maxwell said.
Holmes and Ramesh âSunnyâ Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and the former president of Theranos, are both charged with defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and endangering patients with a technology that didnât function as advertised. The pair, who will be tried separately, each pleaded not guilty to nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Elizabeth Holmes was riding high in 2015 when she spoke with Bill Clinton and Alibaba Group chairman Jack Ma at the Clinton Global Initiativeâs annual meeting.
Brendan McDermid/ReutersOpening statements in Holmesâ trial are expected to begin on Wednesday, and for some former employees, the proceeding in San Jose federal court is bringing back bad memoriesâand giving them hope that someone will be held accountable.
âThe cynical side of me, after years in the Marine Corps, thought thereâs no balance in the universeâbad people get away with shit,â former Theranos software engineer Del Barnwell told The Daily Beast.
âBut this is like this giant karma.â
Barnwell said heâs keenly interested in seeing Balwani, 56, convicted at his trial, now scheduled for January. âIf he gets jail time, thatâs a cause for celebration. In my view, that man had no redeeming qualities I could see. All he ever did was talk about the money he made,â he said.
One former member of the firmâs management team told us, âThis is health care. Youâre dealing with peopleâs lives. She should go to jail.â
The insider, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, said he joined Theranos because of Holmesâ ambition but realized two or three weeks into the job that her promises to investors and potential corporate partners werenât feasible. He called the turtleneck-loving wunderkind a âclassic bullshit artist,â and said he suspects some former Theranos employees have PTSD from bullying within the workplace which he says Holmes condoned.
âItâs surprising it took so long to be uncovered,â the former manager said of Holmesâ and Balwaniâs alleged fraud. âPeople were drinking the Kool-Aid.â

Elizabeth Holmes rubs elbows with, from left to right, Amy Schumer, Katie Couric, and Jill Soloway at the TIME 100 Gala in 2015.
Jemal Countess/GettyHolmes cultivated a board of directors with powerful men including former U.S. Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and former Marine General and Secretary of Defense James Mattisâendorsements that gave her efforts a patina of legitimacy. She also entranced high-powered investors, among them Rupert Murdoch, the Walton family, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
According to the indictment, Holmes and Balwani hyped Theranosâ devices as a faster, less painful alternative to traditional bloodwork and rolled them out in Walgreens pharmacy locations in California and Arizona. They knew their âtechnology was, in fact, not capable of consistently producing accurate and reliable results,â the indictment alleged.
Recently unsealed court records indicate Holmesâ defense might rely on her bombshell claims that Balwani controlled and abused her, and that this alleged misconduct affected her mental state and her capacity to make decisions. (Balwani denied these allegations, and in court filings his attorneys called them âdeeply offensive.â)
Maxwell, who also hopes Holmes serves time, doesnât believe Balwani coerced Holmes in connection to the alleged multimillion-dollar conspiracyâa sentiment echoed by multiple employees interviewed by The Daily Beast. âThe only thing I know and swear by is that she was already manipulative and lying before he entered the scene when we were there in the late 2000s,â Maxwell told us.
âI think if she got off without any sort of conviction, it will support the ongoing perception that the legal system is biased and skewed in this country,â Maxwell added.
Lawyers for Balwani and Holmes didnât return messages left by The Daily Beast.
While neither tech executive appears to have commented publicly on employeesâ claims of intimidation, Holmes previously tried to separate herself from Balwaniâs alleged management tactics while testifying under oath in 2017.
âWe disagreed all the time about a lot of things,â Holmes said in a deposition with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to ABC News. âWe have very different leadership styles.â

Ramesh âSunnyâ Balwani, former chief operating officer of Theranos and ex-boyfriend of Elizabeth Holmes, will stand trial separately.
Justin Sullivan/GettyFor Rochelle Gibbons, Holmesâ trial is ripping open wounds that never fully healed.
Her late husband, Ian, was the chief scientist at Theranos. He died by suicide in May 2013, the day before he was scheduled to testify in a patent dispute between the startup and Holmesâ erstwhile family friend, an inventor named Richard Fuisz. Gibbons said that Theranos had pressured Ian to evade a deposition in the case.
When Gibbons alerted Theranos to her husbandâs death, the company reportedly responded by asking her to return his laptop and any other confidential materials. â[Holmes] never actually really reached out to me ever in the whole history of my relationship with her,â Gibbons told The Daily Beast. âAnd Sunny didnât reach out to me.â
Gibbons said the company made her husband miserable in other ways. âIt was hell for him to work there. It was complete hell. And I think that he was very confused about why he was being treated so badly,â she said.
According to Gibbons, Theranos created a culture of harassment and paranoia. Her husband believed that his emails were reviewed by members of the legal staff. âHe felt that he was always being watched,â she said. âI think [Holmes] wanted to pit people against each other. She was very intimidating. I donât know what else to say.â
Watching news of the trial drip out, Gibbons said she has struggled to process Holmesâ possible defense in the fraud caseâthat alleged partner abuse by Balwani destroyed âher capacity to make decisions.â
âOriginally, she was putting herself forth as sort of an independent, ferocious woman. And now sheâs playing the meek, poor mother,â Gibbons said. âSheâs figuring out a defense, which strikes me as sort of skipping a step, because then she has to admit that she did something wrong.â
Gibbons, however, tries to keep Theranos out of her mind. âI miss Ian every day,â she said. âTo my surprise, Iâm very much at the same level as I was when it first happened. I just feel like Iâve lost something from my life thatâll never come back.â

Elizabeth Holmes goes through security at the federal courthouse in San Jose, California, in 2019. Opening arguments in her hotly anticipated trial are expected to begin this week.
Justin Sullivan/GettyDuring his stint at Theranos, Maxwell also encountered a troubling corporate environmentâone he says was more toxic for some employees than others.
In interviews with The Daily Beast, Maxwell and other former Theranos employees said the tech unicornâs stomping grounds were replete with high turnover, bizarre loyalty pledges, fears of legal retaliation, and the tracking of employeesâ hours, email and computer activity, and even who they had lunch with.
Maxwell said Holmes repeatedly lied to employees and that he eventually learned from engineers that the technology wasnât functional. âI hope engineers are testifying (at trial),â he said. âI hope thereâs other people to demonstrate early that she had been crafting this environment of untruths since the beginning.â
Whenever people quit or were terminated, Maxwell said, Holmes would gather the Theranos flock in a common area to disparage the departing employee, claiming they werenât a team player, didnât understand the technology, or couldnât be trusted.
Maxwell said the Theranos IT team monitored his computer activity and questioned him about who he communicated with or what programs he installed, while Holmesâ assistants watched who came and went from the office. Both teams functioned as âweird corporate spiesâ who reported their findings to Holmes, he said.

Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and former Secretary of Defense William Perry sit down for a meeting with Elizabeth Holmes during a 2013 swing through Silicon Valley.
Glenn Fawcett/WIkimedia CommonsIndeed, investigative reporter John Carreyrouâs 2018 book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup first illustrated how IT employees âat times turned suspiciously friendly in what felt like transparent attempts to elicit seditious gossip,â while Holmesâ helpers âwould friend employees on Facebook and tell her what they were posting there.â Balwani shared in the paranoia, Carreyrou writes, and âwas constantly questioning employeesâ commitment to the companyâthe number of hours a person put in at the office, whether he or she was doing productive work or not, was his ultimate gauge of that commitment.â
Maxwell, who had left Apple for Theranos, said employees knew the blood-testing devices weren't reliable but felt they couldnât speak up because they feared Holmes and company lawyers would wage legal battles against them.
He said Theranos continued tracking him even after he left the company. When someone noticed he gave a talk on interactive design in which he described his previous employer as âa startup that built a blood vampire robot,â company attorneys threatened Maxwell and the host of the program, demanding the speech be redacted. Maxwell said the company also went after his online portfolio for calling the device a âblood robot.â
âI thought my life was going to come crashing down and they would come after me,â Maxwell said. âThey clearly had someone monitoring everything I was doing and publishing online.
âIt sent a message loud and clear that you donât mess with Theranos.â
Barnwell said that when he came to Theranos in 2009, he quickly noticed Holmes and Balwani were âsuper paranoid about everything.â They wouldnât allow employees to list Theranos on their LinkedIn pages and were hell-bent on protecting trade secrets. He said Balwani had enlisted Theranos security guards to carry notepads and jot down when employees entered and left the startupâs headquarters.
The former Marine helicopter pilot had a strange feeling during his final job interview with Holmes. âI could tell then and there, she had this vision and came off like a cult leader,â he recalled. âI think she just wanted fame at all costs.â
Barnwell also figured out that the blood-testing deviceâone that Holmes vowed would change the worldâwas far from revolutionary. âThe machine did not work at all,â Barnwell said. âWhen Walgreens signed and Safeway signed, I was looking at my two buddies, âIâm like dude what the hell are these people thinking?â It doesnât do anything.â
When Holmes and company presented the lab machines to Walgreens and other potential corporate partners, Barnwell said, the data from the devices was canned. âIt was totally snake oil,â he said. âThey would have us manually load data in the database.â
The software engineer finally quit after Balwani called him into a meeting and demanded he work at least 60 hours a week. As Barnwell tells it, Balwani informed him heâd reviewed security cameras to see when Barnwell was in the building and chastised him for working only eight hours a dayâa strange episode also detailed in Carreyrouâs book. âIâm going to fix you,â Balwani allegedly warned.
The mysterious businessman also allegedly told Barnwell, âIf I would have interviewed you, you wouldnât have been hired.â
âHe told me straight to my face, âThe only reason you got hired is because I wasnât in the country at the time,ââ said Barnwell.
Barnwell said Holmes and Balwani never acknowledged his two-week notice, but on his last day, they chased him into the lobby, demanding he sign a non-disclosure agreement. He refused. Balwani then allegedly called a security guard to stop him in the parking lot.
âThe day I left, Sunny made threats about suing me for everything I owned,â Barnwell told us. âEverybodyâs got different levels of what they can take. I wouldnât listen to Sunny and everybody knew it. At one point, he wanted to put hands on me, and I said that would be a bad idea.â
According to Barnwell, his former colleagues later told him Balwani called the cops after he drove away and claimed heâd stolen from the company. When police asked what was taken, Balwani allegedly replied: âWell, itâs in his head.â
âSilicon Valley is a strange place. Thereâs a lot of pretenders there,â Barnwell told The Daily Beast. âBut Sunny and Elizabeth were the weirdest thing Iâve ever seen in my life. If these harebrained ideas came out anywhere else, if you were in Des Moines, it wouldnât get very far. In Silicon Valley, people think everything is magic.â

Elizabeth Holmes arrives for the first day of jury selection last week.
Nick Otto/AFP via GettyYet Holmes still has her defenders. Another former staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he has âmixed feelingsâ about the ongoing trial.
âIt appears that she did many bad things, but I think her intentions initially were certainly not that,â he said. âShe wasnât trying to build a house of cards. She was trying to solve a problem that no one else had been able to solve.â
He acknowledged that Holmes refused to modulate her vision when Theranosâ technology lagged, choosing instead to âignore the realities.â
âElizabeth is portrayed as a charlatan, and I mean, thatâs probably somewhat correct,â he said.
Another ex-employee noticed that same stubbornness, which at first seemed like mere mismanagement. âIt just felt like trying stuff that continued to fail, rather than any of the more dark cloud stuff thatâs come to light, which slipped from dysfunction into deception and manipulation,â he said.
Now, years removed from the business, the employee wants Holmes and Balwani held accountable. âFor me, it mostly seems like, why has it taken so long?â
With additional reporting by William Bredderman