Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes arrives at federal court on Oct. 17, 2022, in San Jose, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
As her prison date approaches, convicted Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes has been ordered to pay victims more than $200,000 and must report to prison by May 30.
A little more than a year has passed since Holmes’ conviction on four federal crimes, and she has been trying to stave off imprisonment ever since. She asked, in vain, for a non-jail sentence, and then after receiving an 11-year term, she sought, unsuccessfully, to remain a free woman pending appeal.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila laid down another hammer by issuing a $452,047,268 restitution order against her and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-boyfriend, co-conspirator and ex-Theranos chief operating officer. Some $124,999,997 of that amount will go toward one of the victim investors: News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch.
In 2015, Holmes became ranked by Forbes as the youngest and wealthiest self-made billionaire from Theranos. Her company claimed to have developed a revolutionary method to perform blood testing with an amount as small as a finger prick, and at its height, Theranos rose to a $9 billion valuation.
It all came crashing down after the Wall Street Journal’s John Carreyrou investigated her enterprise in a series of articles, then in a book titled “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.” HBO later turned it into a documentary. A federal jury agreed that her business left behind a trail of fraud.
Holmes cited the birth of her two young children, after she landed in legal hot water, as reasons to keep her out of jail pending her appeals. The judge first rejected that motion a little more than a month ago, finding that even though he wasn’t a flight risk or a danger to the community, she stood little chance of success on appeal. Her attorneys tried again to delay her imprisonment through an appeal that automatically triggered a stay of her surrender date, previously scheduled for April 27, 2023.
The Ninth Circuit rejected that renewed effort on Tuesday.
With that ruling, Holmes has little time left before beginning her sentence and requested a brief two-week respite to make preparations.
“Given that Ms. Holmes’ April 27 reporting date has now passed, Ms. Holmes respectfully requests an order from this Court setting a new reporting date. Ms. Holmes is preparing to report to the Bureau of Prisons,” her attorney Amy Mason Saharia wrote. “These preparations include out-of-state travel to her Bureau of Prisons facility and medical and child-care arrangements in anticipation of beginning her 135-month sentence. In order for Ms. Holmes to get all of these affairs in order, she respectfully requests that the Court set a new reporting date two weeks from the order, May 30, 2023.”
Prosecutors did not oppose that request and Judge Davila granted it on Wednesday.
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