Global Courant 2023-05-18 01:56:47
By Jody Godoy
(Reuters) – Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes will begin serving her prison sentence on May 30 for defrauding investors in the failed blood testing start-up, once valued at $9 billion.
US District Judge Edward Davila on Wednesday set the date for 39-year-old Holmes to serve 11 years and three months in prison.
Holmes became famous after claiming that Theranos’ tiny machines could run a series of diagnostic tests with just a few drops of blood. She was convicted of fraud at trial in San Jose, California, last year.
She had asked the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to stay her sentence on April 25, two days before she was originally scheduled to report to jail. The court denied that request on Tuesday.
Davila, who oversaw Holmes’ trial and sentencing, had previously dismissed her argument that the appeal is likely to result in a retrial, the threshold for her to remain free on bail.
Prosecutors said at trial that Holmes misrepresented Theranos’ technology and finances. Holmes testified in her defense, saying she believed her statements were correct at the time.
On appeal, Holmes is challenging several of the judge’s rulings, including his granting of evidence about the accuracy of the Theranos test that predates her statements to investors.
Holmes’ co-defendant, former Theranos president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, was convicted in a separate trial of defrauding Theranos investors and patients and sentenced to 12 years and 11 months in prison.
Balwani began serving his sentence on April 20, after Davila and the 9th Circuit rejected his requests to remain free on bail during his appeal.
Forbes named Holmes the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire in 2014, when she was 30 and her stake in Theranos was worth $4.5 billion. Theranos collapsed after a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal in 2015 questioned the technology.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in California and Akanksha Khushi; editing by Richard Chang and Bill Berkrot)
