Expert on corporate crime and sentencing policy available to discuss Holmes trial verdict

Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, was found guilty of four of 11 charges of fraud on Monday, after a closely watched trial that lasted nearly four months. A jury determined that she deliberately misled investors.

Todd Haugh, associate professor of business law and ethics and the Arthur M. Weimer Faculty Fellow in Business Law at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, is available to comment on the verdict and future sentencing.

Haugh’s research focuses white collar and corporate crime, business and behavioral ethics and federal sentencing policy, exploring the decision-making processes of the players most central to the commission and adjudication of economic crime and unethical business conduct.

He can discuss:

• The size of the potential sentencing and the calculation the judge will make in determining it (the statutory maximum is high -- 20 years; the sentencing guideline will be very high -- maybe life imprisonment; but the actual sentence will be much, much lower);
• The impact the acquitted conduct will have on the sentence (none -- the law allows the judge to consider all conduct, even counts she was acquitted of);
• The impact of Holmes going to trial versus pleading guilty (significant because she loses cooperation credit, for example);
• The larger business ethics and compliance implications of the case, which Haugh believes are significant, given the high profile nature of Theranos and Holmes, the culture of Silicon Valley, and the rarity of a criminal trial in a case like this);