The producer behind the popular HBO documentary, “The Inventor” said she met with Elizabeth Holmes prior to filming and she “lied to [him] quite a bit.”
Producer Jessie Deeter was the only person out of the HBO crew to have a sit down moment with Holmes, the founder of the fraudulent company Theranos, according to a report published Wednesday by Entertainment Tonight.
Holmes rose through the ranks of Silicon Valley very quickly with her company Theranos. She claimed to have created blood tests that could test for tons of diseases only using a small drop of blood. Her $9 billion company quickly fell from the top after it surfaced that she allegedly schemed to defraud investors.
“When I spoke with her in the fall of 2017, the SEC hadn’t yet come out with all those multitudes of allegations against her, so our team didn’t know about that,” Deeter told ET reporter Lauren Zima. “But she knew about that. She acted as if she was going to be moving forward.” (RELATED: Former Silicon Valley Darling Elizabeth Holmes’ Fraud-Filled Company Is Dissolving)
Despite investigative reporting at the time alleging Holmes’ business was a fraud, Holmes stood behind her work and defended it.
“I said, ‘You know, Elizabeth, you’re being accused of fraud.’ And she got very angry with that word and said there was no fraud and that she had been treated differently in Silicon Valley because she was a woman,” Deeter recalled.
Deeter left the encounter feeling as if Holmes had interviewed her asking her questions about the team and who they had talked to.
“And of course, I said, ‘I’m not going to tell you who we’ve talked to because you don’t have the greatest history in terms of litigation, right?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She lied to me quite a bit,” Deeter said.