Imagine that, rather than the CEO making shit up, the case was about a lowly lab technician who faked results out of laziness or recklessness. Even though his fraud ultimately impacted the patients, he would probably still get convicted for defrauding his boss or the company he directly worked for, not the patients he never met or knew.
If your client was a wealthy person or large corporation and you knowingly lied to them about the performance of your product or service which caused them damages, would you get charged?
Ultimately, does this mean that the next fraudster will get away with it as long as they keep their investors in the loop about the lies?
But when it's the CEO who does it, doesn't she do both? I mean, those individuals who get the fake test results are also members of the general public.
The law really is weighted in favor of investors.
https://www.reuters.com/business/judge-tosses-deal-shielding...
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/17/theranos-patient-says-blood-...
Being found guilty of defrauding investors in that light is easy because Holmes did specific acts, such as basically saying "we're endorsed by $BIG_PHARMA" knowing that they weren't, as part of her investor pitch--that's a pretty unambiguous traceable injury. But tracing anything she herself said to getting a random schmoe on the street to take a blood test... again, if you think fraud requires that specific act, it's not hard to see why someone would vote not guilty there.
Of course, I would still have liked to see her proclaimed guilty on fraud for the test results. But as abhorrent as her actions may have been, they may not have necessarily climbed the bar into illegality.