You Can See Everything – But Only Because of the Whistleblower
You Can See Everything is a 2026 American Documentary film directed by Nathan Fiedler and Lance Oppenheim. It follows Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the defunct health technology company Theranos, and her partner Billy Evans. Holmes invited the film crew to document her weeks before she began serving her federal prison sentence for defrauding investors. The film will be released by A24 this Friday, October 16.
Society has a fascination, maybe even obsession, with psychoanalyzing infamous criminals. While this usually plays out in rapid-release Netflix docuseries on serial killers, white collar criminals are increasingly getting screen time. The Elizabeth Holmes documentary is but one example.
In November 2022, Holmes was sentenced to serve 11 years in federal prison for defrauding Theranos investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. For more than a decade, Holmes claimed that Theranos, a blood testing company, had developed a revolutionary blood analyzer, variously referred to as the Theranos Sample Processing Unit (TSPU), Edison, and minilab. Holmes asserted that the Theranos blood analyzer could run any blood test that was run by conventional labs from blood drawn via a fingerstick rather than the traditional drawn from vein. She also asserted that this method of blood testing produced results that were better, cheaper, and more accurate than existing methods at faster speeds.
In reality, Holmes knew the Theranos blood analyzer was producing inaccurate and unreliable results. At best, the Theranos blood analyzer could perform a few basic tests, and at a much slower pace than already existing devices. Despite knowing this, Holmes induced dozens of investors, including several prominent public figures, to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Theranos. Holmes consistently provided false representations to investors and potential investors about Theranos blood analyzer’s progress, capabilities, and potential.
Theranos investors included, Tim Draper (billionaire venture capitalist); Larry Ellison (former CEO and co-founder of computer software company Oracle); the Walton Family (founders of Walmart); Rupert Murdoch (Australian media mogul and owner of Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and others); Betsy DeVos family (former United States Secretary of Education); Cox Enterprises; Robert Kraft (owner of the New England Patriots); and others.
Then-Theranos board of directors also included notable figures from both business and government, including, Henry Kissinger (former United States Secretary of State); Jim Mattis (retired Marine Corps four-star general); George Schultz (former United States Secretary of State); Richard Kovacevich (former CEO of Wells Fargo); William Perry (former United States Secretary of Defense); and William Foege (former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
While the film’s focus is on Holmes, the infamous white-collar fraudster, remember that we only know this story because of the whistleblowers.
Tyler Shultz, grandson of then-Theranos board of directors George Schultz, was just 22 years old when he blew the whistle on Theranos and Holmes1. Shultz holds a biology degree and worked in the lab at Theranos for eight months. It wasn’t long before he realized the Theranos blood analyzer could not live up to its promises. Shultz once said that there was nothing that the Theranos blood analyzer “could do that [he] couldn’t do with a pipette in his own hand”. Eventually, Shultz uncovered that Theranos was running tests on commercially available lab equipment, not its own blood analyzer, and using those commercially run reports for quality control safety audits but passing them off as Theranos reports.
Shultz worked with reporters and government attorneys for several years to expose Holmes’ fraudulent scheme and to hold her accountable. Unfortunately, Shultz’s decision to blow the whistle had devastating personal impacts on him, including the deterioration of his relationship with his now passed grandfather and Theranos supporter, George Shultz. You can listen to Thicker than Water, an audiobook by Tyler Shultz, on Audible to hear his as-told-to story.
Since blowing the whistle on the Theranos fraud, Shultz has co-founded two startups in the diagnostic field and speaks to audiences all over the world on the importance of implementing ethics and compliance into companies, and how they can be used as competitive advantages.
So, as you watch the film, don’t forget to consider the enormous emotional, psychological, and physical undertaking exposing this historic fraud had on Shultz and the other whistleblowers. And ask yourself, would you have had the courage to do the same?
SOUND THE ALARM. REPORT FRAUD.
Contact Virginia Grimm at [email protected]
1 Shultz was the first whistleblower to report the company fraud to regulators.
