Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos Founder (left)

image credit : Flickr/TechCrunch

Theranos, The Biotech company once valued at $9 Billion by investors and have been hit with different issues recently amidst charges the company provided false claims and misled investors about its technology has now seen its founder Elizabeth Holmes step down from the CEO position she has held since the company’s founding to this current time where it’s in a midst of problems after being sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for false or exaggerated claims with Holmes agreeing to return 18.9 million shares of the company return and relinquishing her voting control of Theranos as penalties for those charges.

The The Department of Justice has now revealed that Holmes was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and also nine counts of wire fraud and will be departing from the company in relation to these charges leveled against the Theranos CEO and also the company’s former chairman Sunny Balwani.

David Taylor who is the company’s general counsel will now replace Holmes as CEO of the company which raised $700 million of total funding prior to these legal issues and series of investigations and charges against the company.

The company garnered a list of notable investors including the Walton Family who currently chairs Walmart Inc, Notable venture capitalist Tim Draper, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch, The Cox Family and other investors but has now been charged with misleading these investors and falsifying claims of the company’s blood testing technology which wasn’t as effective as it was stated to be.

Even with Holmes stepping down as CEO, It’s reported that she will still chair the board of the company which has currently gotten into financial troubles amidst huge layoffs and a forth-coming liquidation by August this year.

Theranos’ trouble began when the company was investigated in a series of articles by reporters at The Wall Street Journal which undermined the company’s claims about its blood testing technology and with several more investigations sprung up from there, The company was reported to be only able to perform only 12 out the 200 tests the company said it could perform on its blood testing machine and was also reported to have falsified revenue statistics and demonstrated its blood testing samples using other companies’ equipment misleading both the investors and the general public about the use of its technology.

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