Enron was unlike Theranos, in that Enron was originally a legitimate company while Theranos was a scam from the beginning. Enron was a company that sold natural gas, a real product, that became a scam as they used increasingly dodgy accounting practices to push their stock ever higher. Theranos on the other hand never had a real product, and before Theranos even started Holmes was informed by experts (particularly Phyllis Gardner) that it would never work.

In the early days of Enron, an investigative journalist would have found a real gas trading company. But at no point in the history of Theranos would an investigative journalist worth their salt have found a real company.