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Previously on The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes on trial. We learned about the 12 jurors who will ultimately decide Elizabeth's fate, and her first hand from dismissed candidates about what Elizabeth was like up close. This week, the government and the defense set the stage with opening statements.
Giving us a roadmap of how they plan to argue this case. And we hear from the prosecution's first witness, Theronosis Highest Ranking Finance Employee, who will contradict Elizabeth's oft-repeated claims that she was ignorant about financials when she allegedly misled investors. You didn't keep track at all of what Theronosis is turning against. I did not personally know. From ABC Audio, this is The Dropout, Elizabeth Holmes on trial.
Episode 4, Setting the Stage. It's 4.30 a.m. on the morning of September 8th, 2021. Day 1 of opening statements in the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes, the former billionaire and founder of Theronosis, set to be in court today.
Outside the Robert F. Peckham Court House, the scene is loud, chaotic. Photographers and crews lug their cameras and lights, jockeying for the best shot. Reporters prepare to go live. It'll still be hours before the sun comes up, but already a long line is forming. I'm Rebecca Jarvis with ABC News. And I wait in it, along with dozens of other journalists. Most major news outlets have someone here, like Technology Reporter Mike Litke of The Associated Press. What are you expecting today, Mike?
I'm expecting quite a show, yeah. You know, we're going to see the broad contours of laying out each respective case. I'll be really ignorant. There's even a student journalist, Nicole Corso, from Elizabeth Salma Mater. I'm a journalist with a Stanford Daily. That's the school newspaper. Yes, Elizabeth Holmes went to Stanford, dropped out when she was 19 after a few semesters. How do you think that reflects on Stanford, if at all?
I think she's definitely not the first Stanford dropout to have had some major things happen. In addition, there are lots of curious observers, like Lauren Daniel, a student from nearby Palo Alto, just wanting to be a part of history. I finished my internship last Friday, and my school doesn't start for a few weeks, so I thought it might as well just come on down. And finally, there's a trio of what it first looks like Elizabeth in personators, complete with black blazers and messy blonde buns.
A picture of the group makes the rounds on social media, ultimately causing a stir on Twitter. It's only later, once we're inside the courtroom, as I set a few feet away. It becomes clear this crew is part of Elizabeth's entourage, seated with her family and friends. Back outside, when the real Elizabeth Holmes shows up, she breezes past me in a dark skirt suit, walking hand in hand with her partner, baby others. Her eyes are smiling, a mask covers her face.
The couples followed by Billy's father, William, in a gray suit and rectangular glasses. And Elizabeth's mother, Noel. She wears a blue twin set and gauzy scarf. Her hair is in a neat, blonde bob. Inside the courtroom, everyone takes their seats. Elizabeth's up front between her attorneys. The rest of us are behind her, on long wooden pews. Billy sits in the front row reserved for the defense, flanked on either side by the courtroom sketch artist and Noel.
Billy's father is also in the first row. Plus, there's that group of young women who look so strikingly similar to Elizabeth. They chat amongst each other and pass around a padded seat cushion to make the hard bench a little more comfy. At times, Billy seems to subtly comfort Noel, resting his arm around her, rubbing her back. The two chat with the sketch artist as she creates her first work of art, a painting of Elizabeth, looking back at Billy and her family.
Over night, the government has produced more intriguing material. Another six pages of text messages between Elizabeth and her former boyfriend and COO, Sunny Bellwani. Many of the texts show affectionate exchanges during the same period Elizabeth alleges she was systematically abused by Sunny. In one, Elizabeth writes to Sunny, you are breeze and desert for me, my water, an ocean, madly in love with you, and your strength.
She calls Sunny Tiger and says, there meant to be only together and that she feels like the luckiest person in the world because I have you. In another exchange, Sunny writes, missing you. You more, Elizabeth replies. The messages even seem to suggest the pair had a pet. Elizabeth writes, how is our baby bird and says a woman named Priscilla could feed him. Before the day's proceedings can formally begin and the jurors are brought in, Judge Dovela tells the court there's one final issue.
A juror who's been selected may now have an issue participating. Judge Dovela calls in juror number seven, a 19 year old woman who works in customer service. Sitting across the courtroom from Elizabeth, once one of the wealthiest people in the world. Juror number seven explains she's just learned her employer won't pay during jury duty, telling the court how hard it would be on her family to get by with this loss of income.
She apologizes for the late notice, but says she really needs the money to support her mom financially. Judge Dovela and the attorney's attempt to find a solution. Could the juror work alternate hours while court is in in session? There's a lot of back and forth. Juror seven seems stressed, and eventually it's decided calls would be made later to her employer to see if something can be worked out. If not, she'll be replaced by an alternate, but for today the trial must go on.
So Judge Dovela calls in the rest of the jury, many of whom have said they've never heard of Elizabeth Holmes or Theranos before now. And then the opening statements begin. The government starts. Robert Leach lays out a trial road map, sharing with the jurors, the courtroom, and the world, how the government intends to prove Elizabeth is guilty. The importance can't be overstated of opening arguments. It's the old adage, you know, first impressions are everything.
Caroline Polisi is a federal white collar defense attorney in New York, who you've met in earlier episodes. This is really teeing up the entire trial here for jurors. They are going to preview an overview of the entire case and sort of spoon feed them what each witness is going to prove, what each piece of evidence that they're going to introduce means so that the jurors can really understand what this case is all about.
In the prosecution's 50 minute opening statement, Leach lays it out in clear and simple terms. This is a case about fraud, he says, about lying and cheating to get money. He tells the jurors, Elizabeth misled Theranos investors, doctors, and patients who purchased Theranos blood tests to make important decisions. He shows them an image of Theranos' blood analyzer, a device that went by many names, but he says could never do what Elizabeth promised.
They really painted a picture of Elizabeth Holmes as somebody who knew exactly what she was doing, somebody who knew that she was making false representations to investors, doctors, and patients, and somebody who went ahead with it anyway.
That's what they're going to have to prove, they don't need only to show that these statements or misrepresentations were in fact false, they need to show a state of mind, and they need to show that Elizabeth Holmes knew that the statements were false, and that she did it anyway, and that she did it with the intent to deceive in order to make money really for herself and the company.
Throughout Leach's monologue, there's a constant den of clickety-clacking keyboards as the journalists in the room furiously take notes. Elizabeth also takes notes with a pen and paper. She's alert, sitting up pinstrate, turned towards Leach and the jury box. When Elizabeth's attorney Lance Wade gets up to address the court, he takes a very different approach than the government.
Instead of focusing on the evidence, he talks about Elizabeth, calling her a quote, living, breathing, human being, who did her very best each and every day. Wade paints a picture of Elizabeth as an ambitious young woman trying to change the world, who he says quote, worked herself to the bone. He talks about the young woman who walked away from her Stanford education and bet her college savings on an idea.
From the sound of things, Wade might as well be reading from one of the early profiles of Elizabeth, but to most the jurors, it's all new material. They've never heard of Elizabeth till now. Wade makes reference to Elizabeth's family, her mom and Billy, who he points out sitting in the front row of the courtroom. He mentions Elizabeth's newborn baby. They wanted the jurors to get a real sense of who Elizabeth Holmes is as a person.
She is a real human being with hopes and aspirations, always important for defendants to show that they have a life sort of outside of the courtroom. Wade shows the jury pictures of Elizabeth as a young woman, bright eyed and impressionable. He shows them a picture of Stanford professor Channing Robertson. Wade calls Robertson a legend and says he's on a list of 100 people who changed the world. And he bet on Elizabeth.
I was very intrigued by her vision. She asked me if I would be on her board and I said yes. Then Wade shows the jury a picture of Elizabeth and Sunny. Elizabeth looking very young in a dark blue Stanford sweatshirt, Sunny nearly 20 years her senior in a suit with his arm draped around her. Without spelling out specific allegations, Wade seems to hint at a power imbalance between the two.
Sunny convinced Elizabeth to drop out of Stanford. Wade says trusting and relying on Mr. Bellwani as her primary advisor was one of her mistakes. Wade claims. The crux of the defense is mistakes were made. Wade tells the jurors Elizabeth's company failed as so many do. Did she make mistakes? Sure, but who doesn't? At times, Wade also attempts to pass blame for these failures. She was told becomes a common refrain. The defense hit on some really common tropes in white color defense cases.
They really painted Elizabeth as sort of a naive visionary. They noted that she never cashed out of Theranos and if she had really been sort of this devious fraudster. Well, she would have cashed out earlier. I would just note that the points of the defense made were good and perhaps true. Both can be true at the same time, right? Elizabeth Holmes can both have believed in this company and also engaged in fraudulent activity.
The defense didn't tell the jurors that, but they painted her as somebody who put everything their heart and soul into this company. Elizabeth's attorney Lance Wade does later go into some of the science. At one point, he takes a step back, telling the jury, the reality of what happened at Theranos is far, far more complicated than what you've heard. He tells them he hates to say it, but the actual reality is technical, complicated, and boring.
There's also a big stat in Wade's opening remarks that really stands out. He shows the jurors a pie chart. He says the picture represents the results of a survey. Without explaining how the data was collected or even who collected it, Wade tells the jurors 98.2% of those surveyed, said they'd use Theranos again. You've already met patients who say this was not their experience.
Recall Sherry-Aggert from previous episodes. She not only got inaccurate results, but says Theranos never even responded when she tried to reach out to let them know how to satisfy she was. In my opinion, that's the least you can do when you mess up so badly with someone who's potentially got a cancer recurrence and they're worried, stressed out, and you just ignore it. You just totally ignore it. I'm not okay.
Micah Nees was senior manager of customer service and call center operations at Theranos between 2015 and 2016. He said complaints like Sherries came in constantly. The complaints would come in and it would be about these discordant results, meaning that, hey, we took your test and then we went down to another lab and those results are completely different. He says it became common knowledge how frequently the complaints occurred.
We would report it and the lab's response was always, hey, yeah, okay, well, you know, that can happen. They would start gaslighting. And so, you know, it was a lot of stress, you know, it starts chipping away your faith in what's going on. Like, hey, this product's not real, maybe. What do they get to spend this week for us? I lost the lead, I came in and saw me actor in that period and it was tough, extremely tough.
Back in the courtroom, Wade closes his opening statement, a nearly two hour oration with a nod to a Michael Jordan quote, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and I've missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Wade explains Elizabeth once hung that quote in her office.
He shows the jurors a picture of it on the Theranos wall, but she didn't just put it up on the wall. Wade concludes, she lived it. Hey, this is Brad Milky. I host ABC's Daily News Podcast Start here. The dropout will be back in a minute. But first, after a break in or any sort of security issue around the house,
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Again, that start here, the daily podcast from ABC News, available wherever you listen. Not only did the government and defense employ very different strategies with their opening statements, they also made diametrically opposite points. The defense would have jurors believe Elizabeth made mistakes, like she said in her SEC deposition in 2017. Did it concern you that a number of tests weren't working on Theranos' devices? I know that we made so many mistakes on this front.
Whereas the prosecution focused on specific instances where Elizabeth allegedly lied, the government's big theme. Whenever Theranos ran low on money, they say Elizabeth would resort to lying to keep the company afloat. Robert Leach introduced this idea, taking jurors back to 2009, when things weren't going well for Theranos. Okay, so you knew that the company was short on cash? Yes, yeah.
Theranos was struggling to make payroll, and a number of contracts had recently fallen through, including deals with Shearing Plow and Pfizer. Pfizer had a $900,000 contract with Theranos, but it just informed Elizabeth the relationship was over. As Leach put it, the pharma giant was not impressed with Theranos' latest work. Pfizer never did business again with Theranos, but you wouldn't know it from the way Elizabeth talked about Pfizer to investors.
According to the prosecution, in multiple presentations, Elizabeth told investors Theranos' systems had been comprehensively validated by 10 of the 15 largest pharmaceutical companies. She even provided so-called exemplary reports from her supposed pharmaceutical partners. There was just one problem, according to prosecutors. The document, purportedly from Pfizer, had been completely doctored.
According to Leach, Elizabeth took an internal memo from Theranos and slapped a giant Pfizer logo on top, giving investors the false impression Pfizer had endorsed Theranos' mini-blood analyzer. Leach made sure jurors could see for themselves this astonishing piece of evidence and assured them they'd soon be hearing from Pfizer and Shearing Plow. Out of time and out of money, Elizabeth decided to lie, said Robert Leach. It's a refrain he used four times during opening statements.
Elizabeth's early lies, according to Leach, were to Walgreens in Safeway about the capabilities of Theranos' devices in 2010. Elizabeth and Sonny claimed Theranos had developed generations of mini-lab devices that can run any blood test in real time. Making it possible to do any lab test from a tiny drop of blood from a finger. Elizabeth was questioned about this during her deposition with the SEC. How many tests could it run at that time in 2010?
I don't know exactly what the number was. I think there was probably at least tens of tests. So when you say tens of tests, you mean something less than a hundred? Yes. Leach told jurors Theranos' blood testing device could never run more than 12 tests. Ever. Around the time Elizabeth was making these extraordinary claims, Walgreens brought in Kevin Hunter, a lab consultant, to evaluate Theranos' technology. You've heard from Kevin in previous episodes.
One of the documents that I have shows that they said they could do 250 tests. That was August of 2010 on their letterhead. Kevin says lying about the capabilities of the technology wasn't the only false claim Theranos made to Walgreens. Were you told that the technology that Theranos was implementing into Walgreens was viable and ready to go at the time you were working with them?
Yes. As a matter of fact, one of their leading points were that they had been involved in department of defense, that it was being used on the battlefields, and that it was currently being used by seven of the 10 largest pharmaceutical firms throughout the country. Elizabeth was also grilled on some of these points back in that SEC deposition. Was Theranos' technology deployed in emergency rooms, hospitals and provider offices?
No. Was Theranos' anti-factor device ever deployed in the battlefield? No. Was it ever deployed in a meta-backed helicopter? No. Despite what Kevin says were his warnings, Walgreens moved ahead. Instead of running out of money, Theranos got a payday. What was the amount of those patients? I think Walgreens paid us in total 140 million. But three years later, Theranos was failing to live up to its big promises to Walgreens.
The many blood analyzers were taking much longer to be developed than the company had said. And again, the company was nearly out of money, burning through one to two million dollars every week, with just 15 million dollars in the bank. It was only months before the company would be out of business. But according to the prosecution's opening statement, Elizabeth did three things to mislead and get the Walgreens launch going.
First, without the capability to do the majority of tests on Theranos' mini blood analyzer, Elizabeth started using third party and modified third party machines to do the bulk of testing. During opening statements, the defense claimed Walgreens was aware of this. But in their 2017 depositions with the SEC, Elizabeth and Sonny said the opposite. Did Theranos ever disclose to Walgreens what devices it was using to run different test types? No. We would never do that. Why not?
Well, there was a lot of checks. Why wouldn't you tell Walgreens? Walgreens was Theranos' most important business partner at the time. Don't you think that Walgreens would have wanted to know what device you were using to process these samples? I am not aware that they were very focused on what hardware that we were using in Facebook. Some employees would even make jokes about how bad the actual Theranos devices were.
Whistleblower Tyler Schultz talks about one instance during a deposition in 2017. People would pretty much joke about how awful they were. I went out with some of my housemates and I saw some of the product managers there. And one of them was hitting on one of my friends and was saying that he was clean, S.C.D. free. We were making jokes about how we didn't actually know because he was tested with a Theranos device.
Once Theranos found a work around for its testing, the second thing Elizabeth did, according to the prosecution, was seek out positive media attention. After speaking to Elizabeth, Joe Reigo wrote a glowing profile in the Wall Street Journal, touting Theranos for revolutionizing blood testing. The prosecution showed jurors excerpts from the article. One's celebrating Theranos' processes is faster, cheaper, and more accurate than conventional methods.
And saying, Theranos tests require only microscopic blood volumes, not vial after vial of the stuff. According to the government's case, Theranos timed the release of the article with their press release in September 2013, announcing the rollout into Walgreens. Despite internal warnings from scientists that Theranos' mini-lab, the Edison, wasn't ready to go, the prosecution alleges Elizabeth went ahead with it anyway.
The Edison's were completely useless. They were just garbage. They couldn't do the most basic functions they would need to do to be able to do blood tests. Doug matchy was a blood test or assay developer at Theranos. He started at the company in 2012, as they were working to go live with Walgreens, and would often be a part of the demonstrations for investors. I was a part of some of those demonstrations where we tried to show investors things that we said were working, that weren't working.
Tell me about those demonstrations. I remember specifically we were being told, you know, some guys from Walgreens coming in, you know, executives were coming in. So what we need to do is show them that we have a working device. We needed to have these prototypes, these boxes, three different sized boxes. They were the Edison's ears, the machines. They were supposed to be able to take a blood sample, pop it into these boxes, come back an hour, and you've got your blood test done.
Those investors would come in for a routine blood test, thinking it was done on the Edison box. But in actuality, Doug says they do the test by hand. Before the investors come in, even my boss gets a message saying, we need all hands on deck. We're doing this demo thing.
So because the stuff doesn't work on the boxes yet, you guys got to still do these tests on the bench, meaning moving things around by hand, you know, scientists do an actual manipulations to test the blood to get results for it. So when they were having these zikis come in, they think they're sticking in the room, right?
And they'd like, they take that finger stick of blood and they put it in the Edison, they close the door, and they press the button on the screen, they've met nothing, and then they walk out and go and get blind show whatever they would do. When the investors would return, Doug says Theranos would present the results as if they'd just come off the mini blood analyzer. I think it was very clearly fraud. Do you think it's possible that Elizabeth wasn't aware of this?
No, they might have managed everything in that company, like everything. Doug ultimately left the company the month Theranos went live inside of Walgreens. He says he couldn't take it anymore. But what he and other employees were seeing inside wasn't filtering out to the public. Between the Splashy Wall Street Journal article and the Walgreens news, the stage was set for Elizabeth to raise money, and a lot of it, which brings us to the government's third and final point.
Between 2013 and 2015, Elizabeth was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars based on allegedly false assertions. Elizabeth, according to the government, coupled her fabulous publicity with wildly optimistic and outlandish financial projections, even though Theranos was making practically no money at the time. There was no revenues in 2012 and 2013 and then on 150,000 in 2014. Is that consistent with your understanding? The revenues that Theranos made in those years?
I don't know what the actual revenues were in those years. According to the government's case, even though Theranos made just $150,000 in revenue in 2014, as late as October of that year, Elizabeth was telling investors the company stood to make $140 million. So who was keeping those records? She happens to be the prosecution's very first witness. After a break-in or any sort of security issue around the house, the first question is often, is there any security cam footage of the incident?
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Change the way you pizza. After both sides wrapped their long and detailed opening statements, the government called its very first witness, SoHon's Bibi, also known as Denise Yam. Denise was Theranos' corporate controller from 2006 to 2017. Think of her as the financial eyes and ears of the company. And because of this, Denise is pivotal to the government's case.
She's one of the few people who can actually connect the dots when it comes to Theranos' finances, what Elizabeth told investors, and how the company ran its books. Prior to Theranos, Denise worked for Deloitte, one of the big four accounting firms. When she started at Theranos, Denise reported to the CFO, but he quit a few months into her tenure. The company never hired a replacement. She says she thought it was strange, but Denise was new and didn't pry.
She became the highest-ranking finance employee at the company and reported directly to Elizabeth. Denise's name comes up a lot in Elizabeth's own deposition with the SEC. Who was in charge of the financial conditions of the company, making sure that the company was the operations were going smoothly, but there was enough cash. So if you were getting paid, it would be Cybel Lani and Denise again. Who had ultimate decision in terms of whether something could be treated as cash?
Between Sonny and Denise, they would have made that decision. No, who prepares the capitalization table for Theranos, or who maintains it? Denise used to. As part of her job, Denise told the court she regularly updated Elizabeth directly on the company's financial condition. Testifying, quote, Ms. Holmes was aware of the financial state of the company. This may not sound like a big revelation. After all, Elizabeth was the founder and CEO.
To assume she knew about Theranos' financial standing, sounds like a pretty low bar. But the defense, in its opening statement, painted Elizabeth as more of a bystander to these affairs. Elizabeth also claimed as much in her deposition with the SEC. You didn't keep track at all of what Theranos is earning, Reckonies. I did not personally know. But that's not the picture Denise painted in her testimony. Denise said at times she was updating Elizabeth weekly, sometimes even more frequently.
Denise told the court about Theranos' financial troubles. In 2009, the company could barely make payroll, and Denise said she had to pick and choose who to pay. This seemed to feed right into Robert Leijas out of time and out of money. Elizabeth decided to lie narrative from his opening statement. But perhaps the most explosive part of Denise's testimony came when she talked about Theranos' lack of an outside auditor.
Public companies are required to have their statements audited by outside financial firms. It's a kind of check and balance to be sure the company isn't committing fraud. Private companies like Theranos also typically use an outside auditor for credibility as Denise put it in her testimony. Many investors won't even consider putting their money with a company that doesn't have audited financial results. But Theranos wasn't like most other companies, as Elizabeth told the SEC.
We didn't have audited financials for a period of time. That period of time was a long one. An outside auditor hadn't looked over Theranos' books from 2009 onward. Denise said in her testimony Theranos went years without having its financial statements audited. Something she found very unusual. But before Denise could go any deeper, her time on the stand was cut short, when the court had to adjourn for the day. She'll continue next week.
But we know what she's likely to cover. Because this past July, Denise spoke to the FBI. And we have a document that details that conversation. Denise talked about the backstory of how Theranos came to end its relationships with outside auditors. And how Elizabeth kept this information from some potential investors, including one named BDT.
In 2014, the head of BDT, Byron Trott, the former vice chair of investment banking at Goldman Sachs, who Warren Buffett has called the only banker he trusts, began to ask Elizabeth for more financial information about Theranos. He wanted audited reports from 2009 to 2014. But there were no reports to give. Elizabeth knew this, Denise says, but didn't want BDT to know.
So instead, Denise says Elizabeth implied they had the documents, but then hemmed in hot about handing them over, citing privacy concerns. Elizabeth herself shared a very different recollection with the SEC. Did you ever tell any prospective investors that they couldn't see Theranos' audited financials? Because they really reeled commercially sensitive information about the company. Not that I can remember. So they surprised Theranos wasn't getting audits done.
And did they ever want to see audited financials, historical financials? I don't know. They might have, I can't remember. But according to the prosecution, BDT did ask continually and found it suspect that the financial statements never materialized. BDT decided not to invest, but many others did. Rupert Murdock, the Walton family, and Betsy DeVos alone put in $375 million collectively. Denise is also likely to discuss some of the questionable materials those investors saw.
How certain financial documents made it into official pitch materials, something Elizabeth couldn't seem to remember in her own depositions. Did you review the binder of documents that Theranos sent to Mr. Murdock ahead of his investment? I don't know that I reviewed it before he invested. Do you know who put the binder together? I don't. So if you look halfway down the page, there is a text message from you to Mr. Bellwine. Do you see that?
It says, are there any materials in the binders you think should be removed from Murdock, Splash, Muse Corp? Do you see that text message? They do. So what does this refresh your recollection that you would have reviewed Mr. Murdock's binder before you sent it out? No, I don't have one. And finally, Denise is also likely to get into Elizabeth's luxury expenses, like a $2,000 charge for jewelry.
When Elizabeth flew on private jets, Denise would have to ask her, the CEO, for approval to pay the private jet company. Elizabeth's team asked Judge Dovella not to allow questions about this in Denise's testimony. Prior to Denise's appearance on the stand, the judge said he would allow the defense to object if these items came up and would then consider their admissibility.
This could, after all, contradict the image the defense is trying to project of a visionary woman trying to change the world with no motive for financial gain. Ultimately, what Denise's testimony boils down to is, if investors were misled on the financial health of Theranos as the government maintains, Elizabeth, Denise believes, had to be aware of it. To echo a sentiment you've heard from a lot of people on this podcast, she knew.
A direct contradiction to that refrain from the defense's opener, she was told. With Denise wrapped for the day, court adjourned. Field producer Dia Athan describes the scene outside. Around 2-10, everybody exited the courtroom. However, I stayed behind and I watched Elizabeth greet her family members and her friends. She and Billy had a warm embrace. Billy ran his hand kind of over the top of her head through her hair.
It was a very tender real moment between them. Elizabeth and her mother held hands. You could tell that they were holding on tight to each other's hands and squeezing. Billy Evans shook the lead defense attorney Kevin Downey's hand. I mean, it almost felt like congratulatory that they had all made it through the first day. After court, Elizabeth and Billy presumably went home to their forebed for bath rented cottage.
We now know it's one of several on the famed Green Gables estate in Tony Woodside, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Silicon Valley, where Larry Ellison and Charles Schwab have homes. The 10,000 square foot estate with its Roman stadium-sized swimming pool and private reservoir is currently listed for sale for $135 million. It's been host to politicians, royalty, even gatherings of the United Nations.
And now, it's home to Elizabeth, Billy, and Baby William. They'll be nestled there, presumably prepping for more witness testimony. And it turns out they'll have a little more time. Court was supposed to resume last Friday, but on Thursday afternoon, Judge Dovela called a surprise hearing. One of the jurors, number nine, may have been exposed to COVID, Judge Dovela announced. Court was canceled until the lab results come in.
Judge Dovela acknowledged this incident may not bode well for the future of this trial. We have five alternates, he said. It's a little, don't want to say ominous, but it's of concern that before we finish the first witness, we have an issue. And there was one more wrinkle. Juror number 12 reached out to the court, stating they forgot to disclose they worked for KPMG as an admin for five months. KPMG was briefly Theranos' accounting firm.
So, including the 19-year-old juror who worried about her finances, there are now three members of this jury whose fates are up in the air. For now, the trials expected to proceed today, Tuesday, September 14th at 9 a.m. We expect to hear from Dan Edlin Theranos' senior project manager and a fraternity brother of Elizabeth's brother Christian.
There will also be Justin Offen, a Price Waterhouse Cooper employee, and Erica Chung, one of the whistleblowers, who originally set Elizabeth's downfall in motion. It really started to eat me up inside, and that really violated the very basic and simple principle that I had guiding me as a scientist as a human being. That's coming up next week. Elizabeth Holmes, Billy Evans, the Holmes family, the Evans family, and Sunny Bellwani did not respond or declined to comment for this podcast.
The dropout Elizabeth Holmes on trial is written and reported by Victoria Thompson, Taylor Dunn, and me. Victoria is the executive producer, Taylor and I are the producers. For ABC Audio, Susie Lewis producer and Madeline Wood and Marlowe Moaki are associate producers. Our field producer is Dia Athan. For ABC's business unit, our associate producer is Victor Ardonias, and our production assistant is Lane Wynn.
Mixing and scoring is by Susie Liu, Rob Galein, and Evan Viola. Evan also composed the music for the dropout. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips & Y and Cedric Hanstad. For ABC Audio, Liz Alessie is executive producer. Special thanks to Josh Kelhan, Elizabeth Russo, Ian Rosenberg, Eric Avram, and Station Toshishko. Be sure to subscribe to the dropout podcast, and if you like what you heard, leave us a review. It really does help. Listen to new episodes every Tuesday.