Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes will begin prison sentence on May 30
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes to report to prison on May 30 to begin her 11-year sentence after she lost a last-ditch appeal to overturn her conviction.
US District Judge Edward Davila announced Holmes’ new prison start date after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday shot down Holmes’ attempt to remain free while fighting her conviction.
The disgraced Silicon Valley darling was found guilty by a California jury of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud against the company’s investors in January 2022.
In another ruling issued late Tuesday, Davila jointly ordered Holmes and her former lieutenant Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani to pay $452 million in restitution to investors who bought into her claims of a revolutionary diagnostic tool using a finger prick.
A $125 million chunk of that payout will go to Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp, which owns The Post. The federal government had previously asked for more than $800 million in restitution, according to court filings.
The 39-year-old Holmes, a mother of two young children, was supposed to surrender to authorities on April 27 after Davila sentenced her last November.
Her last-ditch legal maneuver was shot down by the higher court, which ruled Holmes’ appeal didn’t raise a substantial question of law and that even if it did, it is unlikely that it would be enough to overturn her fraud conviction, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A lawyer for Holmes didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the government declined to comment.
Who is Elizabeth Holmes and why is she going to jail?
Elizabeth Holmes is the founder and former CEO of Theranos — and a convicted fraudster.
In 2018, Holmes, along with Theranos’ former president Ramesh Balwani, encouraged doctors and patients to use the company’s blood testing services when they knew Theranos was incapable of consistently producing accurate and reliable results, according to the indictment.
The Securities and Exchange Commission pressed fraud charges against Holmes in March 2018, accusing Holmes of defrauding investors of more than $700 million through made-up claims.
Theranos and 34-year-old Holmes ran “an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business and financial performance,” according to the SEC.
In January 2022, the mother-of-two was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and three counts of committing fraud to individual investors, totaling more than $140 million.
Holmes reported to the women’s prison camp FPC Bryan in Texas on Tuesday to begin her 11-year sentence after attempting to overturn her conviction.
The punishment will separate Holmes from her current partner, William “Billy” Evans, their 1-year-old son, William, and 3-month-old daughter, Invicta. Holmes’ pregnancy with Invicta — Latin for “invincible,” or “undefeated” — began after she was convicted.
Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her 11-year stint at a federal women’s prison in Bryan, Texas.
It hasn’t been disclosed whether the Bureau of Prisons accepted Davila’s recommendation or assigned Holmes to another facility.
Balwani, 57, began a nearly 13-year prison sentence last month after being convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last July.
He was incarcerated in a Southern California prison after losing a similar effort to remain free on bail while appealing his conviction.
Theranos had raised around $1.3 billion from several investors before the company came crashing down.
The publicity surrounding the claims of a breakthrough technology earned Holmes celebrity status that included favorable comparisons to tech trailblazers such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.
With Post Wires
