The Reporter Who Took Down a Unicorn

How John Carreyrou battled corporate surveillance and intimidation to expose a multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley start-up as a fraud

By Yashar Ali

In late September of 2015, Elizabeth Holmes, the CEO of the once-high-flying but now disgraced Silicon Valley health-care company Theranos, was in the News Corp. office of Rupert Murdoch. She had first met Murdoch in 2014 to pitch him on Theranos, and convinced him to pour $125 million into the company, making him the largest investor.

Three floors below, Carreyrou was sitting at his desk in the Journal’s office. For months, Carreyrou had been trying to get an interview with Holmes, seemingly coming close but never quite succeeding. He didn’t know it at the time, but now she was just an elevator’s ride away. “This was going to be her last tool to kill the story,” Carreyrou told me. “And given how much she had to hide, that appeal to Murdoch was her last weapon.”

Murdoch refused, for the second time, Holmes’s request to interfere, telling her he trusted the Journal editors to make the best decisions. Just over a year later, Murdoch sold back his $125 million investment for one dollar and took, according to Carreyrou, a massive tax write-off.

Several people who have worked at Murdoch papers have told me that he isn’t above interceding in editorial matters, but in this case, despite his personal interest, he didn’t. A source who has known Murdoch for years explained it, “He’s a newsman — and a good story is a good story no matter what or who the story is about.”

Bad Blood is indeed a great and at times almost unbelievable story of scandalous fraud, surveillance, and legal intimidation at the highest levels of American corporate power. (It will be adapted into a movie directed by…

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