The New York Times was pilloried online over the weekend in response to its profile of convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who is about to begin serving an 11-year plus prison sentence for orchestrating a scheme that defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Times journalist and writer-at-large Amy Chozick authored a 5,200-word feature on Holmes, who now reportedly prefers to be called “Liz,” enjoys antioxidant smoothies, is a doting mother to her two young children, likes ordering in Mexican food, shuns R-rated movies, and has been volunteering at a rape crisis hotline for the past year.
“I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person,” Chozick wrote in the piece. “She’s gentle and charismatic, in a quiet way.”
Chozick added: “If you are in her presence, it is impossible not to believe her, not to be taken with her and be taken in by her.”
The story also included choreographed photos in which images of Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, pose with their two infant children against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean.
The backlash online was fierce.
“Maybe this article would have been served more by a discussion of sociopaths,” tweeted political commentator Matthew Dowd.
“Nice to be a pretty white lady working your charm on a nyt reporter,” tweeted former CNN host Soledad O’Brien, who lashed out at Chozick as “consistently crappy.”
Scott Budman, a journalist who covered the Theranos trial, wrote on Twitter: “The last line of the New York Times story is wrong.”
“It is possible to be in her presence and not completely believe her. Questioning is what we do for a living,” he wrote.
Another Twitter user wrote: “For every glowing puff piece you see trying to rehabilitate Elizabeth Holmes’s image, i want you to remember something… she personally approved a 15 month clinical trial using a device she knew to be useless, to measure cancer drug levels in the blood of terminal cancer patients.”
Twitter user Sean Tuffy tweeted: “Ladies, get yourself a man who loves you as much as the NYT loves rehabilitating the reputation of white collar criminals.”
The Post has sought comment from the Times.
Holmes, who has been free on bail since a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022, was due to begin her prison sentence on April 27.
She managed to avoid beginning her sentence late last month when her lawyers filed an appeal of the federal judge’s ruling ordering her to be taken into custody.
Lawyers for Holmes — who was convicted of fraud over her company’s blood-testing technology — claimed that they were prevented from bringing up exculpatory statements from another convicted fraudster, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former boyfriend who was also president of Theranos.
Balwani, who was convicted of several counts of wire fraud as well as defrauding investors, was sentenced this past December to 13 years in prison.
Theranos was the highly touted Silicon Valley tech startup that raised around $1.3 billion from several investors who were tricked into believing that its blood-testing technology that could diagnose illness through a finger prick was effective.
The publicity surrounding the claims of a breakthrough technology earned Holmes celebrity status that included favorable comparisons to tech trailblazers such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
