Elizabeth Holmes to report to prison May 30 after losing her bid to remain free
SAN FRANCISCO — Disgraced former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes will remain free through the Memorial Day weekend before surrendering to authorities May 30 to begin her more than 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors in a blood-testing scam.
U.S. District Judge Edward Davila set Holmes’ revised prison-reporting date after her lawyers proposed it in a Wednesday filing. It came after a federal appeals court late Tuesday rejected Holmes’ bid to remain out of prison while she attempts to overturn her January 2022 conviction on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy.
The punishment also includes a $452-million restitution bill that Davila ordered Holmes to pay in a separate ruling issued late Tuesday.
Holmes’ lawyers asked Davila to approve the May 30 prison reporting time to give Holmes two weeks to sort out several issues, including child care for her 1-year-old son, William, and 3-month-old daughter, Invicta. Holmes had originally been ordered to begin her prison sentence April 27, but won a reprieve with a last-minute legal maneuver that gave her more time with her children.
Holmes, 39, became pregnant with William shortly before the start of her high-profile trial in September 2021 and became pregnant with Invicta shortly after she was convicted of crimes that could have resulted in a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
The father of both children is William “Billy” Evans, whom she met after breaking up with her former romantic and business partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who began serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence last month in Southern California. Balwani, 57, was convicted of 12 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy committed while he was Theranos’ chief operating officer and living with Holmes.
Elizabeth Holmes had a one-way plane ticket to Mexico booked three weeks after being convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy, prosecutors say.
In Wednesday’s filing, Holmes’ lawyers didn’t disclose the location of the prison that she has been assigned to serve her sentence. But they noted that she has to prepare to travel outside of California, where she has been living in the San Diego area while free on bail. Davila has recommended that Holmes be imprisoned in Bryan, Texas.
When Holmes is finally incarcerated, it will bring down the curtain on a saga that cast a bright light on a dark chapter in Silicon Valley, one that brought her fame and fortune before her scandalous downfall.
After dropping out of Stanford in 2003 to found Theranos while still a teenager, Holmes promised to revolutionize healthcare with a technology that she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential problems with just a few drops of blood. The idea helped her raise nearly $1 billion from sophisticated investors who included Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who is owed $125 million under the restitution order.
But Theranos’ blood tests never came close to working the way Holmes had boasted of with the support of Balwani, resulting in the company’s collapse and a tale that has been the subject of a book, “Bad Blood”; an HBO documentary, “The Inventor”; and a Hulu miniseries, ”The Dropout,” which won Amanda Seyfried an Emmy in the starring role.
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