Disgraced Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes has been allowed to delay the 11-year prison sentence that she was supposed to begin at 2 p.m. on Thursday, April 27.
Holmes’ lawyers are appealing her guilty verdict to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. This week, they requested for Holmes, who recently gave birth to her second child, to be able to stay out of prison while the appeal is in process.
In November, Holmes attempted to delay sentencing by requesting for a new trial in light of “newly discovered” evidence. US District Judge Edward Davila, the judge who oversaw her trial in federal court in San Jose, California, denied this request. He ruled that the arguments brought forward by Holmes’ lawyers for a new trial did not have enough merit to prove allegations of government misconduct, and the statements that the lawyers were referring to as newly discovered evidence were not material to result in an acquittal.
The 39-year-old former Silicon Valley star was found guilty of defrauding investors, to whom she made promises of a groundbreaking blood-testing technology that failed to materialize. She was convicted of three counts of wire fraud. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months, but was facing 65 years of jail time for deceiving investors about her blood-testing startup. Her lawyers were seeking 18 months of house arrest.
Holmes led so many to believe Theranos’ promise to revolutionize the world of health care with her miniaturized blood testing machines that the company was once valued at $9 billion at its peak. Only for them to find out later that none of the technology that Holmes promised worked, and the company was actually relying on conventional machines to run patients’ tests.
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, president and COO of the failed blood-testing startup and Holmes’ former lover, was denied a similar request by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was convicted of 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy and sentenced to almost 13 years in prison. He began serving his sentence at a low-security facility in San Pedro, California on April 20th.
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