30-05-23, 19:18
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Re: Elizabeth Holmes Arrives at Texas Prison For 11-Year Term
Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Turns Herself in For 11-Year Prison Term
Elizabeth Holmes enters Texas prison to begin 11-year sentence for blood-testing hoax
BBC 31 MAY 2023
Elizabeth Holmes has surrendered to a federal prison in Texas to begin her 11-year sentence over the Theranos scandal which rocked the high-flying tech world of Silicon Valley.
The 39-year-old disgraced tech entrepreneur reported to Bryan, the minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas, on Tuesday after exhausting all remaining legal avenues to cling to her freedom.
Holmes was convicted in January 2022 of four counts of fraud and conspiracy for lying about the capabilities of her biotech company’s blood testing technology and conning investors out of millions of dollars.
She was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison and ordered to pay $452m in restitution to investors – including $125m to media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Holmes had been given until 2pm local time to surrender to the prison camp where she will see out her 11-year sentence surrounded by other white-collar, non-violent female offenders.
Her two children – two-year-old William and three-month-old Invicta – will be allowed to visit their mother in the facility.
The prison camp, which runs a work-focused program where all inmates are required to hold a job for at least 90 days, is a marked difference from Holmes’ life years earlier when she was seen as the darling of Silicon Valley.
The saga began two decades ago when Holmes dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 at the age of 19 to found Theranos.
The blood lab company aimed to develop medical devices that could diagnose hundreds of diseases and medical conditions with just a pinprick of blood.
Over the next 10 years, Theranos boasted about its capabilities to transform the healthcare industry and grew to a value of $9bn, attracting investments from the likes of Murdoch, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the heirs to the Walmart fortune.
The company amassed an influential board of directors including former presidential cabinet members George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and James Mattis.
Holmes, meanwhile, was catapulted onto magazine covers and became heralded as the next Steve Jobs while her personal fortune reached $4.5bn.
But the technology didn’t do close to what Holmes claimed it could.
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