Disgraced Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, has been denied a stay of execution while she appeals her conviction for fraud committed while overseeing a blood-testing scam that exposed Silicon Valley’s dark side.
In an 11-page ruling issued late Monday, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila concluded that there was insufficient evidence to keep Holmes free on bail while her lawyers try to persuade an appeals court that alleged misconduct during her four-month trial resulted in an unjust verdict.
The judge’s decision means Holmes, 39, must surrender to authorities on April 27 to begin serving the more than 11-year prison sentence imposed by Davila in November. Ten months earlier, a jury found her guilty of four counts of fraud and conspiracy against Theranos investors who believed in her promises to revolutionize the healthcare industry.
On March 17, Holmes accompanied her lawyers to a courtroom in San Jose, California, to try to persuade Davila that various errors by federal prosecutors and the omission of key evidence will result in her exoneration by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Holmes’ sentence is set to begin roughly 20 years after she dropped out of Stanford University at the age of 19 to found Theranos in Palo Alto, California — the same city where William Hewlett and David Packard founded a company bearing their surnames in a small garage and planted the seeds of what became Silicon Valley.
Holmes could still file an appeal of Davila’s latest ruling, a strategy her Theranos co-conspirator Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani successfully used to postpone his scheduled March 16 start date for a nearly 13-year prison sentence. However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied that appeal last week, and Balwani is now scheduled to report to a Southern California prison on April 20.
Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her sentence in a prison in Bryan, Texas. It has not yet been publicly confirmed whether or not that will be the facility where she will report.
Unless she can find a way to remain free, Holmes will be separated from her two children both before and after her conviction.
Her first child, a boy, was born just before the start of her trial in September 2021. The youngest child, the gender of whom has not been revealed in court documents, was born sometime after her November sentencing. She had both children with her current partner, William “Billy” Evans, whom she met after breaking up with Balwani during Theranos’ demise.
The denial of Holmes’ request to remain free is the latest twist in a long-running saga that has already been the subject of an award-winning HBO documentary and a Hulu TV series.
Despite their separate trials, Holmes and Balwani were charged with essentially the same crimes centered on a ruse touting Theranos’ blood-testing system as a medical breakthrough. The claims helped Theranos become a Silicon Valley sensation, raising nearly $1 billion from investors and awarding Holmes a $4.5 billion fortune based on her 50% stake in the company.
Holmes also used the buzz surrounding Theranos to land speaking engagements alongside former President Bill Clinton and glowing cover stories in business magazines that compared her to tech visionaries like Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
However, Theranos’ technology never came close to working as well as Holmes and Balwani claimed, resulting in the company’s scandalous collapse and a criminal case that shed light on Silicon Valley’s greed and hubris.
