The founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, will have to go to jail at the end of the month. She failed in her attempt to stay out of jail while she fought her convictions in court.
Elizabeth Holmes was imprisoned for more than 11 years because she lied to people who wanted to invest in her blood testing business.
On Monday, a federal judge said that Holmes’s case would be thrown out if she couldn’t show that she had followed the right steps to appeal.
On April 27, she will go to prison.
Holmes said she would ask “substantive questions” that could lead to a new trial. However, her lawyers also said that she should be free to care for her two young children.
But in his ruling on Monday, US District Judge Edward Davila said that Elizabeth Holmes hadn’t shown that her appeal would lead to a new trial.
“Contrary to what she said, Ms. Holmes lied to Theranos investors about more than whether the technology worked as promised,” he said.
During Holmes’ trial, the prosecutors said she was a flight risk because she had bought a one-way plane ticket to Mexico.
Homes’ lawyers said she and her boyfriend, Billy Evans, were going to a wedding and hoped she would be found not guilty.
In his decision, Judge Davila said that buying the ticket was “not a good idea,” but he also said it was not an attempt to run away.
“It’s brave for a criminal defendant to book international travel plans in hopes of a complete defense win, and it’s dangerously careless for them not to cancel those plans right away after a guilty verdict,” he said.
Elizabeth Holmes was called “the next Steve Jobs” and the youngest self-made billionaire in the world.
She dropped out of Stanford University to start Theranos. In 2018, it was found that the company’s technology didn’t work, and the company went out of business. With just a few drops of blood, the device for testing blood was said to be able to do a lot of different tests.
A TV show, an HBO documentary, and a podcast all told how the company went bankrupt.
In January of last year, Holmes was found guilty of four counts of fraud. She told the court at the time that she felt “deep pain” for the people who fell for the scam.
She is likely to try again to stay free during the appeals process, which could take at least a year and will happen in a court in San Francisco where she wants her conviction overturned.
The BBC has asked Holmes’s attorneys what they think.
Sunny Balwani used to work with Holmes, and he was given a prison sentence of almost 13 years.
Prosecutors accused Elizabeth Holmes of trying to leave the US
Prosecutors say that Elizabeth Holmes, who started Theranos, tried to leave the US soon after she was found guilty of fraud last year.
A new court document says that the 38-year-old bought a one-way ticket to Mexico in January of this year.
Prosecutors said, “The trip was canceled only after the government found out about this illegal flight.”
Elizabeth Holmes was found to have lied to investors in her blood-testing business, which was once worth $9 billion (£7.5 billion).
The former star of Silicon Valley said that the technology could tell what was wrong with just a few drops of blood. But, unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. But it didn’t work, and in 2018, after being sued several times, the company went out of business.
The court document also said that Holmes’s partner had bought a one-way ticket to Mexico.
Holmes was found guilty of swindling investors in early January 2022, and he got more than 11 years in prison in November. She was told to go to prison on April 27 of this year when she was sentenced.
Even though she was found guilty, she quickly filed an appeal. Now, she wants a judge to let her stay out of jail past April while her appeal is heard in federal court. It might take a whole year to do that.
Her lawyers also said Holmes would raise “substantial questions” that could lead to a new trial.
In California, according to the most recent court filing, Holmes has been paying $13,000 (£10,500) a month to live on an estate while her appeal is being heard.
Elizabeth Holmes started Theranos when she was 19, right after she quit Stanford University. So when executives said it could change how diseases are diagnosed, the company’s value went through the roof.
Several popular podcasts and TV shows, like The Dropout on Hulu, which starred Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, told the story of Holmes’s rise and fall.
Sunny Balwani, who used to run Theranos and was Holmes’ business partner, got almost 13 years in prison in December.
Elizabeth Holmes has apologized for her business “failures” and said she has “felt deep pain for what people went through because I failed them.”
