Elizabeth Holmes (Image: Sipa USA/Yichuan Cao)

Elizabeth Holmes, the now infamous Stanford University dropout who founded the health technology company Theranos, was convicted last week on four counts of defrauding investors of A$975 million. 

Even before the verdict, the pundits were busily analysing the “lessons” from the saga – warning about the “fake it until you make it” culture of Silicon Valley and finger pointing at investors for their so-called lack of due diligence. Said one female entrepreneur interviewed in Forbes: “The thing that hit home for me, in terms of the Holmes story, was the lack of diligence that any one of the investors did. They didn’t ask to use the service themselves or talk to a physician. I was amazed.”

Actually some investors did ask, and were treated to an elaborate ruse that not only involved lies about why a venepuncture rather than a finger stick was used to draw blood, but also went to great lengths to hide the truth that the machines doing the analysis were not Theranos’ technology. As one journalist duped by Holmes admitted ruefully when questioned about how his profile of Holmes for Fortune — which she used to great effect to draw in more investors — got it so wrong: “I think I asked the right questions. I just got the wrong answers.”

But who exactly is guilty, and of what? And why are we so reluctant to point the finger that way?

The guilt lies solely with Holmes (and also with any male Silicon Valley CEOs who some suggest have behaved a lot like Holmes). Lying is a deadly sin for the simple reason that we can’t know what’s going on in another person’s head or heart and can’t fact-check everything he or she says.

But to have any kind of functional relationship with that person, and for society to be functional, we have to trust. This switches the moral obligation — to act in good faith and to tell the truth — to the person making the claims, not the one receiving them.

Con artists know how to exploit this obligation to truth-telling by hijacking our confidence to get us to do what they want. They play us.

Holmes played her investors to get money into Theranos at critical moments. She told her business partners and investors — and reporters — what she knew they needed to hear to write her a cheque, and avoided telling them what she knew would turn them off, no matter what or how they asked. 

Evil may not start with bad intentions or come in an ugly or scary package like the Wicked Witch of the West or Cruella de Vil. Sometimes it can look and sound like Elizabeth Holmes.

As my adult son once remarked: “If someone is going to lie right to your face, you have no chance.”