I agree, especially when you use the recent Shkreli case as a point of comparison. You have Shkreli who has been put away for 7 years for a hypothetical 10mil, yet Holmes commits "massive fraud", possibly losing 100's of millions of investors' money, and most likely gets away with a 600,000 fine and no jail time.

Also, regarding the Shrekli case, didn’t everyone end up financially better off than they started?

Umm, the money had to come from somewhere.

Nah they did. He lost their money on stocks, lied about the state of their investments then paid them all a healthy return from his drug ventures with them none the wiser.

It came from the pockets of insurers and individuals who couldn't afford insurance at all when he jacked up the prices of essential drugs.

That wasn't illegal at all though :)

Just that he lied to his investors about the source of the returns.

People who can't afford insurance can't afford retail price either, and get discounts.

Well, parsing that statement:

> claimed that Theranos’ products were deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense on the battlefield in Afghanistan and on medevac helicopters

That is clearly a statement looking at past events, so if it was false it was clearly a lie

> the company would generate more than $100 million in revenue in 2014.

The important word there appears to be "would", in which case it was a forward-looking statement so easier to argue it was based on projections that just didn't pan out.