Image Elizabeth Holmes leaving court on Thursday. Ms. Holmes is on trial for fleecing investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and misleading patients and doctors.Credit…Nic Coury/Associated PressClosing arguments in the fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes were expected to finish on Friday, inching the monthslong saga closer to a verdict.Ms. Holmes, who founded the blood testing start-up Theranos, is on trial for fleecing investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and misleading patients and doctors. Theranos rose to prominence, hitting a $9 billion valuation, before collapsing in 2018 after it was revealed that the company’s blood tests did not work as Ms. Holmes had claimed.After closing arguments are completed and jury instructions are given, jurors — eight men and four women — will begin deliberating whether Ms. Holmes committed 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Ms. Holmes has pleaded not guilty. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in jail, which could send shock waves through the freewheeling world of Silicon Valley start-ups.On Thursday, prosecutors summarized more than three months of testimony in their closing arguments while rebutting some points made by Ms. Holmes’s lawyers. The government did not disagree with Ms. Holmes’s point that business failure, on its own, was not a crime, said Jeffrey Schenk, an assistant U.S. attorney and a lead prosecutor on the case. But when Theranos was running out of money in 2009 and 2010, “she chose fraud over business failure,” he said.Mr. Schenk also addressed Ms. Holmes’s accusations of abuse against her former business partner and boyfriend, Ramesh Balwani, known as Sunny. Ms. Holmes’s emotional testimony about the abusive and domineering nature of their relationship was a separate issue from the fraud case, Ms. Schenk said.“The case is about false statements made to investors and false statements made to patients,” he said. “You do not need to question whether that abuse happened.”Kevin Downey, a lawyer for Ms. Holmes, also delivered the first two hours of her final defense by reiterat …
