Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for her Theranos fraud – The Verge

Elizabeth Holmes’ bizarre PR campaign continues

2025-02-12T17:27:52-05:00

She’s totally different now, she promises.

I have heard it said that fame is the most addictive of all drugs. I have been skeptical about this, but Elizabeth Holmes' ongoing PR saga makes me wonder if it is, in fact, true.

Holmes has appeared in People magazine to tell us that prison is "hell and torture," in the same way that one might say "butt and ass" or "dick and cock." The point of hell, for those of you who are not up on Christian theology, is torture. That's what it's for.

Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors at her company Theranos. She fought tooth and nail, every step of the way, to avoid this. First, she insisted on her innocence (and even testified in her own d …

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Former Theranos executive Sunny Balwani is sentenced to almost 13 years in prison

2022-12-07T18:26:45-05:00

Ramesh Balwani has been sentenced to 155 months, or just under 13 years, in prison, according to The New York Times. Like his former business partner, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, he's due another three years of supervised release after he gets out. Balwani will have to surrender to custody on March 15th.

In July, Balwani, also known as Sunny, was convicted on 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for his actions while he was president and COO of Theranos. Unlike Holmes, who was found guilty of only defrauding investors, Balwani was found guilty of deceiving both investors and patients.

Part of Bal …

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Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison

2022-11-18T17:18:45-05:00

Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 135 months, or just over 11 years, in prison, according to journalist John Carreyrou. She will have to report to prison on April 27th, 2023, and will have an additional three years of supervised release once she's out, according to Yahoo Finance's Alexis Keenan.

Judge Edward Davila, who has overseen the case, declared that the charges she had been found guilty of made her responsible for defrauding 10 victims out of $121 million, according to The New York Times' Erin Griffith. Davila said that Holmes' refusal to accept responsibility for the fraud counted against her in his sentencing decision, accordi …

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Is Elizabeth Holmes’ guilty verdict a wake-up call for startups?

2022-01-07T13:25:29-05:00

After a long trial, former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of four out of the 11 charges brought against her, including three counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors in her now-defunct blood testing company. The verdict caps a journey filled with both promises and disappointments, one that ultimately led to the downfall of what could have been one of the most successful companies, and entrepreneurs, to come out of Silicon Valley in over a decade.

While the verdict is a milestone in holding startup founders accountable for false promises, it actually further complicates the difference between fraud and th …

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Elizabeth Holmes’ verdict won’t change Silicon Valley

2022-01-05T08:30:00-05:00

There is no doubt in my mind that former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes will appeal the four charges she was convicted of: conspiracy to defraud investors and wire fraud. She still has the Silicon Valley mindset, after all: reality can be bent to your will. But what have we learned from the Theranos trial? Almost nothing.

Holmes was found guilty on four of 11 counts after about 50 hours of deliberation. Those counts could be grouped, roughly, into defrauding patients and defrauding investors. The jury found her not guilty of defrauding patients or conspiracy to defraud patients.

The easiest part of this case to prove was about money, and tha …

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Elizabeth Holmes found guilty of defrauding investors

2022-01-03T19:23:09-05:00

Elizabeth Holmes deliberately misled investors about the capabilities of the blood testing technology at Theranos and is guilty of three counts of wire fraud, a jury found today. She is also guilty of conspiracy to defraud investors with her co-defendant, Sunny Balwani.

She faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the counts. The jury found her not guilty of two counts of defrauding patients and not guilty of conspiracy to defraud patients. The jury did not return a verdict on three more counts of defrauding investors.

Holmes was the founder and CEO of Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize blood testing by developing a devic …

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The story of Elizabeth Holmes now belongs to the jury

2021-12-17T20:10:51-05:00

From the beginning, Elizabeth Holmes knew how to tell a good story. She launched her blood testing company, Theranos, with a tale of a powerful vision to revolutionize health care and change an old, outdated industry. She presented herself as Steve Jobs, part two. She sketched out a picture of someone in control.

That Holmes, and that story, is what prosecutor John Bostic worked to reset back to during his rebuttal argument, the last word before the case went to the jury on Friday afternoon. It wasn't reasonable to think the CEO of a company didn't know exactly what impression she was giving to investors, Bostic said. It was clear she knew …

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The Holmes trial is about money

2021-12-16T21:30:43-05:00

Prosecutor Jeffrey Schenk opened his closing arguments in the case against Elizabeth Holmes by talking about a banker. Holmes knew Theranos, the company she founded, was running out of money, and she was on the phone asking her banker to clear a check early.

"Holmes had a choice to make," Schenk said. She could figure out a way to raise funds to keep the company moving, or risk seeing it wither away. And her choice, he said, was to raise the funds through fraud.

The prosecution's closing statement on Thursday was a reminder of what this trial is really about: money, and mostly rich people's money. Those rich people, who gave their money …

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Elizabeth Holmes was always in control

2021-12-09T08:00:00-05:00

Control and image are important to Elizabeth Holmes. They were important to the PR effort around Theranos when she was portrayed as the second coming of Steve Jobs. They were important when she delegated reprimands to maintain her friendly image. And they are important now - as a jury is about to decide whether she's guilty of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Since September, she's walked to the courthouse holding hands with someone - usually her mother. I have watched Holmes sit bolt upright at the defense table as her lawyers slowly wilt. She's dressed in business attire - sheath dresses with structured blazers or skirt sui …

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Elizabeth Holmes smiles on the stand as her trial nears an end

2021-12-07T22:01:21-05:00

I expected more fireworks from a cross-examination of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. Instead, today was a disjointed day of questions without a clear narrative throughline. I don't know why the government chose to send an assassin who didn't know when to twist the knife.

Today was scattered

The defense presented a strong narrative on its direct examination. Holmes was a young CEO who believed in Theranos' technology and had some very credentialed advisors who led her to believe it was real. There was real intellectual property. Holmes never sold her shares. And while she hadn't done anything wrong, she was also being abused by her boy …

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