Business fraud is the act of betraying stakeholder trust by concealing or distorting information to make targets believe certain products or schemes are attractive. Despite ample research through case studies and interviews investigating the causes of fraud, fraudsters’ deployment of legitimation skills remains understudied. This perspective is essential because language unequivocally plays a crucial role in legitimating deception and false claims. This study compares how Theranos’s CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, discursively constructed and maintained corporate legitimacy before and after her fraudulent acts were exposed in October 2015. Drawing upon van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework, legitimation strategies were identified and comprehensively compared in Holmes’s video interviews. The results revealed that Holmes predominantly used analogy, narrativisation, and evaluation strategies, which performed different functions before and after her corporate scandal’s exposure. This study not only advances understanding of how Holmes combined legitimation strategies to elevate Theranos’s moral status and defend herself as an altruistic entrepreneur but also contributes to existing literature on business legitimation by demonstrating that legitimation strategies are performed differently in mediated forms of business discourse.

商业欺诈是通过隐藏或扭曲信息以使目标用户相信某些产品或计划具有吸引力而背离利益相关者信任的行为。尽管通过案例研究和访谈调查进行了大量的调查，以调查欺诈的原因，但欺诈者对合法技能的部署仍处于研究不足状态。这种观点至关重要，因为语言在使欺骗和虚假主张合法化方面起着至关重要的作用。这项研究比较了Theranos的首席执行官Elizabeth Holmes在2015年10月暴露欺诈行为前后，如何以话语方式构建和维护公司的合法性。利用van Leeuwen的合法性框架，确定了合法性策略，并在Holmes的视频采访中对其进行了全面比较。结果表明，福尔摩斯主要使用类比，叙事和评估策略，在公司丑闻曝光前后，执行了不同的功能。这项研究不仅增进了对福尔摩斯如何结合合法化策略来提升Theranos的道德地位并捍卫自己作为无私企业家的认识，而且还通过证明合法化策略在商业话语的中介方式上有所不同，为现有的商业合法化做出了贡献。