I think the thing that weighed most heavily in her favor was the fact she did not dump her stock when things started to blow up. She went down with her ship. That meant the prosecution had a steeper hill to climb in order prove fraud.
“I think the thing that weighed most heavily in her favor was the fact she did not dump her stock when things started to blow up. She went down with her ship.”
She didn’t have any stock to sell. She settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2018.
She settled the charges by paying a $500,000 fine, returning 18.9 million shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos, and being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years.
IIRC the criminal charges weren’t filed until after she settled with the SEC.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes