Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 135 months, or just over 11 years, in prison, according to journalist John Carreyrou.
Judge Edward Davila, who has overseen the case, declared that the charges she had been found guilty of made her responsible for defrauding 10 victims out of $121 million, according to The New York Times’ Erin Griffith. Davila said that Holmes’ refusal to accept responsibility for the fraud counted against her in his sentencing decision, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A jury found Holmes guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this year. In the weeks leading up to the former Theranos CEO’s sentencing, prosecutors asked the judge to give her 15 years of prison time and to pay victims more than $800 million. On the day of the trial, the government argued Holmes’ actions put patients in harm’s way, according to the WSJ.
Meanwhile, Holmes’ lawyers filed an 82-page document arguing why she should get a much lighter punishment — 18 months of house arrest and community service, at most — and provided well over 100 letters written in support of the founder.
Holmes led a company that promised to revolutionize the medical industry by running over 240 tests on a single drop of blood, where traditional panels required much larger samples.
But it turned out that the company’s tech didn’t work, and gave patients inaccurate results. (Holmes was found not guilty on two counts of defrauding patients and one count of conspiracy to defraud patients.) The trial mainly hinged on whether Holmes knew she was giving out false information. In announcing his decision, Davila cited texts between Holmes and Sunny Balwani, former chief operating officer and president of Theranos, as proof that Holmes conspired to defraud investors, according to NBC News’ Scott Budman.
Judge: “What is the pathology of fraud? Is it the inability to accept responsibility? Perhaps that the cautionary tale to come from this case.”
— scott budman (@scottbudman) November 18, 2022
Balwani was also found guilty in a separate trial; 10 counts of wire fraud, and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Unlike Holmes, Balwani was found to have misled both investors and patients. He is set to be sentenced on December 7th.
Source: The Verge Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to over 11 years in prison
