Prosecutors in the fraud trial against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes wrapped up their case this week by calling former Fortune reporter Roger Parloff as a witness.
Parloff wrote a 2014 Fortune cover story that helped push hot blood-testing startup Theranos into the limelight. A year later, after Theranos was accused of deceiving patients and investors, Parloff wrote a mea culpa about how the company had misled him.
Holmes, along with former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, were eventually charged with fraud. Both pled not guilty. The Holmes trial started three months ago while Balwani’s has yet to begin.
On the witness stand, Parloff said he has 10 hours of recorded interviews with Holmes about her blood-testing equipment, which was pitched as hugely innovative because it required patients to merely provide a couple drops of blood rather than a vile. During questioning, he described how Holmes lied to him about the effectiveness of her company’s technology, a topic that is at the center of the trial.
In the follow up to his Fortune cover story, Parloff explained that he had missed some of the “red flags” and elusive answers the company had given him. Holmes had declined to explain some details because of “trade secrets,” such as why so many patients had to submit to venipuncture, or regular blood-drawing with a needle, rather than a small pin prick.
In a 2015 article, The Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou exposed some of the company’s misstatements. According to a former Theranos employee, Theranos technology was only able to handle 15 tests using finger-stick blood draws rather than the over 200, going on 1,000, that Holmes originally claimed.
From its founding to the Holmes criminal trial, here’s Theranos’ trajectory:
Timeline: The rise and fall of Theranos
March 2004: Elizabeth Holmes, 19, drops out of Stanford to start Theranos, a biotech company that she claimed would revolutionize the healthcare industry by making blood-testing dramatically cheaper and more convenient.
2004-2010: Theranos raises tens of millions of dollars and eventually achieves a $1 billion valuation. Some of the company’s highest-profile investors included media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Its board included prominent figures in business and government, like Henry Kissinger, Jim Mattis and George Shultz.
September 2013: After keeping a low profile to focus on research and development, Theranos launches a website, and Holmes goes on a media spree, sharing that the company has signed a long-term partnership with Walgreens to install its lab testing service to stores across the country.
June 2014: Holmes is featured on the cover of Fortune after being profiled by publications like Inc. and Forbes. By this time, the company had raised $400 million from investors and was valued at more than $9 billion.
October 2015: The Wall Street Journal reveals inconsistencies in Theranos’ claims about its blood testing after employees said that only a small fraction of tests were actually performed on the company’s own equipment. Holmes publicly defends the company’s tech, but the report marks the beginning of Theranos’ troubles with investors, partners, and the federal government. Theranos halts its finger-pricking practice amid scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration.
November 2015: Theranos and Safeway, which had pledged in 2010 to invest $85 million in its partner, part ways. Safeway had already invested $350 million to build Theranos clinics in its stores.
December 2015: Former Fortune writer Roger Parloff recounts how he was misled by Holmes about her company’s technology.
January 2016: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sends Theranos a letter saying the company had failed to comply with federal standards and that its lab is “likely to cause, at any time, serious injury or harm, or death.”
June 2016: Theranos loses its partnership with its largest retail partner, Walgreens, which later filed a $140 million lawsuit against the company for breach of contract. Forbes revises its estimate of Holmes’ net worth from $4.5 billion to $0.
March 2018: The SEC charges Holmes and Balwani with “massive fraud” and accuses the two of “raising more than $700 million from investors through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.” Holmes is barred from serving as a director of any public company for 10 years.
June 2018: Holmes resigns as CEO of Theranos just before federal prosecutors file criminal charges against her and Balwani, for which they both plead not guilty.
September 2018: Unable to find a buyer, Theranos tells stockholders it will dissolve.
May 2020: Federal prosecutors add another criminal wire fraud charge against Holmes. She now faces 12 counts of fraud.
December 2020: Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Holmes’ criminal trial is delayed until 2021. She gives birth to her first child in March, which delays it further.
September 2021: The trial begins.
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