Elizabeth Holmes' Alleged Former Assistant Details Working for Theranos CEO

With Elizabeth Holmes' story having recently been told in compelling form in Hulu's eight-episode series The Dropout, her alleged former executive assistant has lifted the lid on working for the disgraced Theranos CEO.

Following a delayed trial, Holmes was in January 2022 found guilty of four counts of defrauding investors: three counts of wire fraud, and one of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

She was found not guilty of four counts of defrauding patients: three counts of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The jury did not reach a verdict on three counts of deceiving investors.

Today, she remains a free woman on a $500,000 bond, with her sentencing set to take place in September 2022.

Last month, as The Dropout aired on Hulu, Leona Marlene took to her TikTok account to share a glimpse into what it was like working for Holmes, after serving as her employee for approximately 18 months between 2012 and 2014.

Newsweek is still trying to confirm Marlene's position within Thaneros, and has reached out to her.

Discussing the show's portrayal of life at Theranos, Marlene said: "So far, the series has been pretty factual, except for [Holmes'] cringe dancing to Lil Wayne. I don't know if that happened.

"But this was my first job right out of college. I supported Elizabeth and Sunny [Balwani, Theranos president and COO] and I have a lot of stories."

Marlene added that she was "still mildly terrified of them and that I'm going to get in trouble for sharing this stuff somehow."

In another video, Marlene discussed the portrayal of Holmes consuming green juice on a daily basis, after one of her followers asked about it.

"I was Elizabeth's executive assistant," Marlene started off by explaining, "but when her personal assistant left, I had to take on both roles.

"So every morning at 7 a.m. we were supposed to be at Whole Foods to pick up four juices for the day, and then we were supposed to go back later in the day to pick up four more juices, because it absolutely needed to be very, very fresh.

"I was already spending like 18 hours of my day at Theranos, so needless to say I did not have time to go back to Whole Foods.

"So I may have purchased green juice in bulk, and I may have put four in one fridge, four in another. And I may have gone on a little walk in the middle of the day to pick up more green juice—from the fridge, not Whole Foods. Swirl them around so they look real, real fresh and give her her fresh green juice every day."

Elsewhere, Marlene said that she often worked from 7 a.m. until "close to midnight" during the week, as well as clocking in on many weekends.

"It was seriously impossible to ever get time off, so I said I had I had an emergency doctor's appointment," she revealed. "During that actor's appointment I actually had an interview with another company called Tunein, which is a radio app."

While Marlene, who now works remotely for a San Francisco-based start-up, said she found the show to be largely accurate, she defended the other staffers who also toiled at Theranos.

"Theranos really had some of the smartest people I've ever met in my entire life," she said. "Everyone was truly just working their a**es off, working 14-plus-hour days. People were so passionate and truly believed in the mission and what we were capable of doing, and we had no idea what was going on behind the scenes."

She went on: "I think that's the hard part about these shows, in that it makes everyone maybe look so clueless at times because you have a bird's eye perspective of what's happening across the entire company.

"But not everyone in the company had that perspective. We weren't being told the truth. We didn't know what was going on. And we also had made promises to large corporations and had deadlines we needed to stick to.

"The entire goal was to make it work, like it didn't feel like there was an option, and convince everyone else on the outside that it was working."

Prosecutors argued Holmes and Balwani, who was also indicted and whose trial has just started, set out to defraud investors and separately, to defraud doctors and patients.

The indictment alleged Holmes and Balwani made false claims "concerning Theranos' ability to provide accurate, fast, reliable, and cheap blood tests and test results" and omitted information about the problems associated with Theranos' technology.

Balwani's own trial began in late March. Like Holmes, Balwani was indicted on two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud.

The prosecution argues Balwani was an accomplice to Holmes. His defense claims Balwani could not have committed fraud because he never made any money from Theranos. Like Holmes, he faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Holmes was portrayed by Amanda Seyfried in The Dropout, while Naveen Andrews played Balwani, who had previously dated Holmes.