Entrepreneur Holmes resisted her eleven-year prison sentence until the end – but now she has been transferred to a federal prison. The Theranos founder had deceived investors with supposedly revolutionary blood tests.
Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes is in prison in Texas. The founder of the company Theranos, which made headlines with a large-scale blood test scam, is serving an 11-year sentence at the Bryan State Women’s Prison.
The federal agency FBI confirmed that the 39-year-old had been transferred. The detention center is near the city of Houston, where Holmes grew up. Before going to jail, she had to say goodbye to her two children: a son who was born in July 2021, just weeks before her trial began, and a three-month-old daughter.
Holmes’ appeal was dismissed
In January 2022, a jury found Holmes guilty of fraud. In November last year, a US district judge sentenced him to 11 years in prison, which was less than the 15 years required by prosecutors.
Until recently, Holmes lived with the children’s father in the San Diego area on bail. A few weeks ago, an appeals court rejected her application to suspend her imprisonment until the appeal process had been completed. Holmes was originally scheduled to begin her sentence at the end of April. But with her application to suspend the start of detention for the duration of the appeal, this timetable was overturned.
Financially strong investors got involved
Holmes was convicted of robbing investors of hundreds of millions of dollars as CEO of Theranos by tricking them into believing that her 2003 start-up had developed a revolutionary blood-testing device. Tests that normally require taking vials of blood through veins are said to work with her method using a prick in the finger.
The charismatic young entrepreneur was celebrated as a tech pioneer. Investors put almost a billion dollars into the start-up company. Theranos reached a valuation of nine billion dollars (8.4 billion euros) in financing rounds. Holmes herself became a billionaire.
businesswoman argues allegations of fraud away
But Theranos’ blood-testing machine, called the Edison, didn’t produce the expected results, so the company secretly resorted to conventional tests. Research by the “Wall Street Journal” finally led to the scandal becoming public.
Holmes has always denied defrauding investors. She admitted mistakes, but claimed to have believed in the potential of her technology. She also blamed her ex-boyfriend and former business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani for the scandal. He was also found guilty of fraud and sentenced to almost 13 years in prison.