Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes must repay Rupert Murdoch $188 million

Theranos was once one of Silicon Valley’s most feted startups, valued at more than $US9 billion at the peak of its success.

The biotech company, which Ms Holmes founded when she was 19, promised to deliver revolutionary technology that would detect hundreds of diseases and other ailments from just a few drops of blood.

Ms Holmes, who became known for wearing Steve Jobs-style black turtleneck sweaters, claimed to be a self-made billionaire by the age of 30.

However, the company spectacularly collapsed amid claims of fraud. A series of reports by the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper owned by Mr Murdoch, exposed how bosses were secretly sending blood tests to traditional laboratories instead of using Theranos’ signature blood-testing machines.

‘Total embarrassment’

Mr Murdoch is said to have subsequently emailed the Wall Street Journal calling himself “one of a bunch of old men taken in by a seemingly great young woman,” the New York Times reported.

As part of the restitution order, Ms Holmes and Mr Balwani must also hand back $US40 million to pharmacy chain Walgreens, which invested in Theranos in 2013 after agreeing to provide its blood testing kits across some of its 9000 US stores.

Another $US14.5 million is owed to supermarket giant Safeway, which had also agreed to be a Theranos business partner before ultimately backing out.

Ms Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the scandal in November last year. Mr Balwani was sentenced to almost 13 years in jail.

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In her first interview since the scandal broke in 2016, Ms Holmes told the New York Times earlier this year she had been “playing a character I created”.

She said: “I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas.”

The Telegraph, London