Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Theranos, has been denied her bid to stay out of prison while appealing her conviction for fraud and conspiracy. US District Judge Edward Davila ruled that the evidence presented wasn’t compelling enough to allow Holmes to remain free on bail. She must now surrender to authorities on April 27th to begin her 11-year prison sentence.
Holmes had dropped out of Stanford University at 19 to set up Theranos in Palo Alto, California, the same city that William Hewlett and David Packard established the company that grew into Silicon Valley.
Holmes’s co-conspirator, Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani, had also attempted to delay his own 13-year prison sentence by appealing. However, his appeal was rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and he is now scheduled to report to a Southern California prison on April 20th. Judge Davila has also recommended that Holmes serve her sentence in a Texas prison.
Holmes had two children during the trial and after her conviction. The first, a boy, was born shortly before the trial began in September 2021, and the second, whose gender has yet to be disclosed, was born after her sentencing in November. Both were conceived with her current partner, William ‘Billy’ Evans, whom she met after breaking up with Balwani in the midst of Theranos’s downfall.
The denial of Holmes’s request to remain free is the latest development in a saga that has already been the subject of an acclaimed HBO documentary and award-winning Hulu TV series. Holmes and Balwani were accused of using false promises to attract investors and hype up their blood-testing system. This helped the company amass nearly $1 billion and temporarily grant Holmes a $4.5 billion fortune. She also received glowing praise from media outlets, with one even likening her to tech visionaries such as Steve Jobs. However, the technology never worked as promised, leading to the company’s downfall and the criminal case that exposed Silicon Valley’s greed and hubris.
