Elizabeth Holmes, the former top woman of the American Theranos, is sentenced to more than eleven years in prison for fraud at the blood testing company she founded.
LOOK. Pregnant Elizabeth Holmes, hand in hand with her husband and parents, goes to court.
Holmes, 38, was previously found guilty of fraud. The jury found it partially proven that Holmes defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and put patients at risk with inaccurate lab results. She was acquitted of a number of charges.
The sentence handed down by a San Jose district judge on Friday is much closer to the 15-year sentence prosecutors had sought than the house arrest or up to 18 months in prison that Holmes’ lawyers had asked for. Her counsel is expected to ask that Holmes – pregnant with a second child – be allowed to await an appeal in liberty.
“I am devastated at my shortcomings,” Holmes said shortly before Friday’s verdict. “Looking back, there are so many things I would do differently if I had the chance. I was trying to realize my dream too quickly.”
Fraud
Holmes was the brains behind start-up Theranos, a company that allegedly developed a device that could test for various conditions, such as cancer and diabetes, with just one drop of blood. That turned out to be too good to be true. Holmes falsified test results and did not use his own device in a first test project, but used common technology, which was later revealed by whistleblowers.
The plagued Theranos ceased to exist in 2018. The company was worth $9 billion at its peak. Many investors, including Rupert Murdoch and former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, lost many millions in the affair.
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