She was once considered a model US entrepreneur, but the steep rise was followed by a spectacular fall: In January, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty on four counts of investor fraud by a jury. The verdict followed in mid-November. The 38-year-old was sentenced to eleven years and three months in prison. At that time, the 39-year-old already had a one-year-old son and was pregnant with her second child.
In sentencing Holmes, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila extended the date of her admission to a Byron, Texas jail to April 27 to allow her to give birth to her second child before being incarcerated.
As the American news agency Associated Press reports, the baby is said to have been born in the meantime, which is why she is asking for her sentence to be suspended. The parole motion for Holmes, filed ahead of a March 17 hearing in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, did not specify when she gave birth to her second child. Holmes hopes to stay free during an appeals process that could last for years.
In the motion, her attorneys also allege that there were a number of errors and abuses in the process. These make it likely that their conviction will be overturned. They also point to Holmes’ impeccable record, who has been out on bail in the four and a half years since her indictment, as proof she poses no escape or community threat.
With her start-up, Holmes was celebrated as a self-made billionaire in the early 2000s. Theranos promised a revolutionary technology for blood tests that could be sampled with just a few drops from your finger. Investors were enthusiastic, but the alleged success story turned out to be a hoax for both patients and financiers. In 2015, an investigative report by the “Wall Street Journal” raised doubts about the technology, followed in 2018 by fraud charges against Holmes and her ex-lover, the company’s former president Sunny Balwani. Holmes appealed the verdict.
Watch the video: Former star entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of fraud. The founder of the US blood testing company Theranos lured investors into investing in her company with deliberately false claims about her company’s technology, the jury in San Jose, California ruled.
Sources: Associated Press, NBC News, USA Today, DPA
