Silicon Valley’s “fake it till you make it” ethos had already been found guilty when Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of fraud earlier this year. Now, the founder of Theranos is finally being jailed for 11 years. She deserves it.

Holmes made a name for herself by emulating the iconic innovator Steve Jobs, dropping out of a prestigious college and even wearing Jobs’ trademark black sweaters, while launching a blood-testing startup.

But unlike Jobs, Holmes never actually built anything — except for one big Ponzi scheme that saw her rake in nearly $1-billion in investment and put her on the covers of business magazines, where she was lauded as a pioneering woman trying to make the world a better place. Except it was all a lie. Holmes claimed her blood-testing device — the size of a small microwave — could conduct about 1,000 different tests using just a few drops of blood.

She signed deals with Walmart, major pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS and even seemingly had the US military interested. Her investors included former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former education secretary Betsy DeVos (whose $100-million investment evaporated), Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch (goodbye, $120-million investment).

But Theranos could never do what it promised, not even remotely. Theranos was actually using blood testing machines from other manufacturers to do the actual work. Patients’ blood was not being tested at the various pharmacies, as promised, but being shipped to Theranos labs for processing.

Holmes even claimed the US military was using her equipment on the battlefield, a claim which former US defence secretary James Mattis would expose as a lie when he testified.

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So, what went wrong? However well-intentioned Holmes was, when Theranos started running into trouble in 2009 and couldn’t deliver on what she promised, she started lying to investors. Like all tech startups, she started with hyperbole and shifted into outright lies. Much more faking it, than making it.

As Assistant US Attorney Robert Leach said at her trial: “Out of time and out of money, Elizabeth Holmes decided to lie. She chose fraud over business failure. That choice was not only callous, it was criminal.”

Indeed, as the 11-year sentence demonstrates, her criminality caught up with her. In essence, she was corrupt. Holmes started including the logos of major pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, Schering-Plough and GlaxoSmithKline on technical reports to make it seem that they had approved of Theranos’s technology. She claimed she did this, “because this work was done in partnership with those companies and I was trying to convey that”. 

I have followed Holmes’ fall from grace and trial with as much obsession as I have the unravelling of Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s mad reign as Public Protector in front of her Section 194 hearing in Parliament. Perhaps it’s the impunity of how these two supposed leaders twisted the truth to suit their own nefarious needs and purposes.

But what has been on trial as much as Holmes’ obvious lies is how Silicon Valley has created a culture of stretching the truth. 

Holmes was well-intentioned, but lost her way, the argument goes. Sound familiar?

Remember how WeWork’s grand plans turned out to be grand fabrications?

It suddenly looks like most of the crypto industry has been economical with the truth, with the crypto exchange FTX the latest failed business that hid its failings. Like Holmes, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried hid an $8-billion hole in its assets, having used investor funds to prop up his other business, Alameda Research.

What strikes you about how Holmes and Bankman-Fried pulled off their great scams is that people were enthralled by their supposed genius and the fear of missing out on a big investment opportunity. But what it shows is that lying never prospers, as parents tell their kids — especially when you are raising (or stealing) money from unsuspecting people. BM