She said it was being trialed by the military, in reality what had happened was Mattis said he would be able to introduce the technology to the military. This type of "abstraction" is in very many pitches I've read over the years.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/c/LawyerYouKnow [2]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOShJ_GPEegXscrlKWfpwCA [3]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiWXvA_5bzvOFdbS353Ll-Q [4]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwCqasesYi60fSrOjlUSNzg
That's not an "abstraction". It's a lie, and therefore fraudulent.
If you're seeing these sort of lies all over the place, you might be in a weird bubble. Startups are known for creative wordplay, but if you're straight up lying about something happening when it's not happening at all or even started, that's fraud.
Surely there would be a contract with the military if that was the claim and surely these investors did due diligence and audited the contracts, nobody would ever get wrapped up in the hysteria and hype and burn a billion dollars…
tbqh, I came away from the trial really feeling like the investors who testified against her deserved what they got because of how they approached the situation. IMO Elizabeth Holms isn't some mastermind manipulator, she's more akin to a child who was enabled by moronic parents.
I think the crucial distinction between a slight stretch like you describe and what Holmes did is the tense: the military is going to test our product vs. the military is testing our product (which did not, uh, exactly exist then). One is a rosy forecast and the other is just a lie.
But as I understood it, that's not what she said. Your phrasing is about the future, i.e. something nobody can know at the time it is being said whether it will come true or not. Therefore, something anyone with the least bit of common sense would think "Yeah, let's hope that will happen" about.
Completely different than saying "the military is running / has run a test with our equipment". That's a statement of actual ongoing or concluded fact. If it actually is happening or has happened when you say it is happening or has happened, then you're telling the truth; if it isn't / hasn't, then it's a lie.
From what I gather, what she said was the latter -- but it never actually happened: So, a lie. Said with intent to induce people to give her money: So, fraud.
That's pretty far from a fair summary. Mattis made the introduction, Holmes could not get past the initial military diligence, and killed the project, and yet years later continued to represent that it was an important part of Theranos' business, to add an imprimatur of success and reliability of the testing.
I'm not sure this is true. She told a lot of egregious lies to investors while trying to get money from them. She repeated those lies in the press and to anyone who questioned it. And I don't mean a lie like lying that your product is more effective than it is. I mean she told prospective investors about huge contracts with the defense department that did not exist. She told investors that her machines were being use in the battle field. These were lies that were never going to be true.