2023-05-30 22:53:51
The one who dreamed of changing the world is now behind bars. Elizabeth Holmesthe ex-Silicon Valley star sentenced more than 11 years in prison for fraud in the head de sa start-up Theranosbegan his sentence on Tuesday in a prison in Texas near Houston, where his family is from.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirmed to AFP that the former entrepreneur arrived at the federal prison in Bryan, Texas, as observed by journalists.
In January 2022, after a four-month trial, Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of deception in fundraising for Theranos, which claimed it could revolutionize the world of medical diagnostics.
She tried several legal appeals to avoid going to prison pending a possible appeal trial, hoping to have her conviction overturned, but they were rejected.
Minimum security
At 39, twenty after founding the start-up, she is therefore behind bars in an establishment for women, equipped with a “minimum” security system. According to the BOP website, this type of prison has dormitories, a small number of guards and rehabilitation programs.
Theranos promised faster and cheaper diagnoses than those of traditional laboratories, thanks to methods presented as revolutionary, allowing multiple tests with a very small amount of blood. But the technology never worked as promised, and the company closed in 2018, leaving behind investors who had injected hundreds of millions of dollars into the company’s capital.
$452 million to be returned
Elizabeth Holmes has always claimed her good faith, denying having knowingly sought to deceive investors. In mid-May, Judge Edward Davila ordered him and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani to jointly and severally return $452 million to investors. Among them, Rupert Murdoch, to whom the two former partners owe 125 million dollars.
In an interview at New York Timespublished in early May, Elizabeth Holmes explained that even before the damages, she was unable to pay her attorneys’ fees, which the prosecution estimated at more than 30 million dollars.
“I will have to work for the rest of my life to pay them back,” she said.
The press reported that in 2019 she married Billy Evans, whose family owns a chain of hotels. She has two young children. Her story fascinated the American media, because before her downfall, she embodied a certain image of innovative Silicon Valley. In 2014, Forbes valued Holmes’ fortune at $4.5 billion and described her as the youngest female billionaire who did not inherit his fortune.
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