- Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, appealed her 11-year prison sentence for fraud and will remain free until the appeals court rules.
- Despite requests for probation, the judge ordered that he report to prison before April 27.
- Holmes was convicted of deceiving investors with her blood analysis startup, which promised to revolutionize the health sector.
“There is still no prison for Elizabeth Holmes”, headline the american medias this Thursday, April 27, after it became known that The founder of Theranos appealed the decision of a judge who days before had determined that he will appear in prison this week.
Indeed, Holmes, who came to be considered the “new Steve Jobs,” will remain free until an appeals court rules on his bail request.
The founder of Theranos must serve an 11-year prison sentence for fraud.
On Tuesday night, Holmes’s lawyers appealed that ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. Under court rules, that means Holmes will remain free on bail for now.
Holmes, 39, has two children, one of whom was born before the start of the trial, in 2021, and the other at the end of 2022, just after his sentence was announced.
It must be remembered that a federal jury in San Jose, California, convicted Holmes of 4 counts of defrauding investors in his ill-fated blood analysis company.
In November 2022, federal judge Edward Dávila sentenced Holmes to 11 years and 3 months in prison.
Immediately, the former CEO’s lawyers asked that she could remain free on bail while she appealed the conviction. At the beginning of April of this year, the judge denied that request and ordered that he appear in the prison unit before April 27.
Holmes’ parole requests were denied, among other things, because there is fear of a leak.
Last January, prosecutors in the case said Holmes I had booked a one-way flight to Mexico shortly before being sentenced.
Everything indicates that Holmes will finally go to prison, since his mentor and ex-boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, convicted in a parallel trial, also sought to remain free but the same judge rejected his motion.
Balwani, 57 years old, He is serving a 13-year sentence in a low-security federal unit in Los Angeles.
Based on this story, the series “The Dropout” tells the fraud of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. It’s in Netflix.
The Great Theranos Scam
The US justice concluded that Holmes was guilty of conspiracy (one count) and fraud (three counts) for deceiving investors into placing money in his startup.
Theranos assured that his firm would mark a before and after in blood tests, with fast and cheap tools.
Holmes came to have an estimated fortune of US$ 3,590 million in 2014. In fact, the only person with that volume of money without inheriting anything.
In Silicon Valley he became a star and received support and money from influential personalities from all over the United States. Even Carlos Slim invested in Theranos.
To convince investors, he even used printed material with the logos of companies such as Pfizer and Schering Plow, companies with which Theranos had no relationship.
The unauthorized use of logos was one of the “mistakes” for which fraud began to be discovered.
It all came crashing down for Holmes after an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, medium that denounced that its machines were not functional and that the CEO of Theranos could have misled investors and patients.
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