DeVos Family Lost $100 Million in Theranos

The DeVos family lost $100 million investing in Theranos. The revelation was made during the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos. During the trial, a DeVos family witness, Lisa Peterson, said the family was originally going to invest $50 million but later chose to double it to $100 million after speaking with Holmes. 

Holmes, a Stanford University dropout, was 19 when she founded Theranos in 2003 and peddled the company's blood-testing capabilities as revolutionary, claiming that it could run a rapid battery of tests from a single finger prick. But the technology never lived up to its promise.

Betsy DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, the son of the late Richard DeVos. Richard DeVos was a co-founder (with Jan Van Andel) of Amway, No. 13 on Happi's The Top 50. Betsy DeVos, is the former US Secretary of Education.

To rake in more money from her investors, Holmes is accused of falsely claiming that Theranos was on track to make $100 million in revenue in 2014 when in reality it was only generating about $100,000. In total, Holmes received more than $700 million from private investors and East Coast hedge funds.

DeVos wasn't the only multibillionaire to be bamboozled by Holmes. For example, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and family-owned Cox Enterprises also invested $100 million on Theranos. Other high-profile investors who bought into Holmes' scheme include Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Riley Bechtel, chairman of Bechtel Group. On the Theranos board were former secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn and Bill Frist, former secretary of Defense William Perry and former Defense Secretary James Mattis.