On Monday, Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California refused to allow Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, to stay out of prison while she appeals her conviction. Consequently, Holmes is expected to report to prison later this month.
Judge Davila stated that Holmes is neither a danger to the public nor a flight risk. However, he questioned the likelihood of her appeal succeeding. Even if Holmes prevails, the judge noted that a reversal or a new trial order for all the charges on which she was found guilty is improbable.
Previously, Judge Davila directed Holmes to turn herself in for custody on April 27, 2023.
In November 2022, Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, was sentenced to over 11 years in prison after being convicted on several fraud charges for her role in a multimillion-dollar scheme that deceived investors in her blood testing company, Theranos. Holmes' attorneys have not yet commented on the decision.
Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, Holmes' former partner and Theranos' ex-COO, was found guilty of multiple fraud charges in a separate case. He received a nearly 13-year prison sentence in December. Balwani's request to avoid prison during his appeal was also rejected, and he has been ordered by Davila to turn himself in on April 20.
At one point, Theranos was valued at $9 billion and attracted prominent investors and retail partners with claims of having developed technology capable of testing for various conditions using only a few drops of blood. However, after a 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation, the company began to collapse, as the report revealed that Theranos had only ever conducted around a dozen of the hundreds of tests it advertised using its proprietary technology, and their accuracy was questionable.
Holmes' trial was postponed several times, first due to the coronavirus pandemic and then because of her pregnancy. After being sentenced in November, Holmes requested a delay in the start of her prison term following the birth of her second child.
While Judge Davila did not consider Holmes to be a flight risk, he mentioned her booking of a one-way ticket to Mexico in January 2022. In the court documents, Davila noted that although Holmes' attorneys claimed she had booked the trip to attend a friend's wedding in Mexico, expecting a different verdict, the court acknowledges that the one-way ticket was not an attempt to flee the country, but an ill-advised decision.
