Elizabeth Holmes’s Netflix documentary “You Can See Everything” was a huge box office success during its limited release:
Still, it is Nathan Fielder’s confounding documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything,” that has captured the cultural zeitgeist. Released on 855 screens, with over 2,000 sold-out shows, the nearly three-hour documentary follows Ms. Holmes, both a month before entering federal prison for crimes related to her medical technology company, Theranos, and two years into her sentence. It grossed an estimated $15 million from Friday through Sunday, making it one of the largest openings this century for a movie debuting on fewer than 1,000 screens. It will expand to wide release next weekend.
What message does it send when criminals are allowed to leverage their crimes into brands, effectively profiting or otherwise benefiting from them? It’s like, “Don’t commit crime or we’ll send you to a white-collar dorm prison, where you’ll serve half your sentence after an extremely long pre- and post-trial period, and Netflix deals and lucrative opportunities (e.g., podcasts, consulting) await your release.” It’s just a mockery of the system.
At this point it’s arguably rational to commit white-collar crime. If you succeed, you’re set for life. If you fail, you may only spend 1-5 years (after various reductions and early release) in an all-expenses-paid dorm retreat, where podcasts, Netflix, and other opportunities await when you get out. Sure, you will have a criminal record, but that hasn’t stopped anyone anymore. (Just ask a sitting president.)
If your employment prospects were bad to begin with (e.g., a Princeton PhD sending 2,300 résumés and getting no job), then for all practical purposes what difference does it make if you have a “record”? The prison stint will help secure employment when you get out (or at least until you get the book deal and podcast gig sorted out). These will not pay well, but it’s a better position than the Princeton grad’s.
But there is a twist, and this explains why her criminal pivot was so successful: she targeted a handful of ultra-wealthy victims, NOT retirees, charities, or otherwise regular people. This worked in her favor in many ways. This is why her crime was perfect, even if she did get caught and go to jail. The victims of Theranos were primarily a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals:
Victims and Restitution: Holmes and Balwani were ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to 12 designated investor-victims, which included high-profile figures and entities such as Rupert Murdoch ($125 million), the family of Betsy DeVos ($100 million), Walgreens, Safeway, and the Walton family (founders of Walmart) who invested in Theranos.
It’s hard to summon much sympathy for the handful of victims, who were already wealthy and well-connected and presumably well informed of the risks, compared to the many normal or regular individuals defrauded in the case of FTX. Also, the actual losses were much smaller than the stated headline losses for Theranos, as the latter were calculated from an already greatly inflated valuation. FTX losses were actual customer balances, a different and worse story.
In her case, defrauding the wealthy worked to her advantage, which agrees with an old post, contrary to the popular notion to “never steal from the rich.” The argument is that the rich have better lawyers or sympathetic judges who can impose large sentences, but this is offset by fewer victims, having more wealth to ignore or fail to act on the loss, and a less sympathetic public and even judge. Fewer victims also means fewer potential counts, as this is independent of monetary loss.
A billionaire Walmart heiress who cannot even do the basic due diligence (as if having tens of billions of dollars were not enough) is unlikely to rally a public to her cause. And fewer victims means potentially fewer charges. So in her case, it worked in the end. A lucrative movie and career opportunities await her release, with the movie adding to her lore even if her portrayal is unflattering. As it’s said, there is no such thing as bad press.
As for the part about her lying, so what? The public has become inured to this because everyone does it. Of course, this logic will not convince a judge or jury, but it explains why the public is more indifferent, and why she will bounce back. Tech is the obvious example. Meta’s executives were accused by a bipartisan group of senators of hiding evidence of harm to kids from Congress and the public. Or Covid: In March 2021, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said that vaccinated people “do not carry the virus,” and the CDC walked it back within days.
By comparison, an ambitious startup founder who oversold the efficacy of her blood-testing device comes off as “business as usual”. As shown in the above examples, people who lie seldom face consequences. Mark Zuckerberg is wealthier than ever, and Facebook is more profitable than ever. This seems like a revealed vs stated preferences disconnect. It’s like, we oppose lying in principle, but we can also compartmentalize why people lie, so we are quick to forgive. Overall, it’s not like she escaped accountability entirely. 10 years is not a trivial sentence. But what message is society sending when rehabilitation and penance becomes a stepping stone to a lucrative career?