CNN
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Elizabeth Holmes is scheduled to report to prison on Tuesday, ending a stunning fall for the disgraced founder of failed blood-testing startup Theranos.
Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison in November, after he was convicted months earlier of multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the now-defunct startup.
His request to remain free on bail while he fights to have his conviction overturned was rejected by an appeals court earlier this month. Judge Edward Davila, who presided over his trial, ordered Holmes to turn himself in to the Bureau of Prisons on May 30 to begin serving his sentence.
Holmes is expected to serve his sentence at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in south Texas, a minimum security federal prison camp approximately 100 miles from Houston, where he grew up before moving to California to attend at Stanford.
Her ex-boyfriend and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was also convicted of fraud, and reported to a California prison last month to begin serving his sentence.
Holmes was once an icon in the tech world, serving as a posterchild for the limitless ambitions and potential of Silicon Valley. Today, he and Balwani are the rare tech executives to be tried, and convicted of, fraud charges.
Michael Wyke/AP
Dawn breaks at the Federal Prison Camp where Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder and CEO of Theranos, is expected to arrive to begin her 11-year sentence for fraud related to the defunct company Tuesday, May 30, 2023, at Bryan, Texas.
Holmes left Stanford at age 19 to focus full-time on Theranos, a startup that claims to have invented technology that can accurately test for various conditions using just a few drops of blood. Theranos raised $945 million from an impressive list of investors and was valued at about $9 billion at its peak — making Holmes a billionaire on paper. He graced magazine covers and engaged in public speaking engagements wearing a black turtleneck that invited comparisons to late Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
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His company came under fire after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had performed only about a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy. It is also known that Theranos relies on devices made by third parties from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology.
Theranos finally dissolved in September 2018.
Holmes and Balwani were first indicted together nearly five years ago on the same 12 criminal charges. Their trials were cut short after Holmes revealed that he intended to accuse Balwani of sexually, emotionally and psychologically abusing him throughout their decade-long relationship, which coincided with his time at the helm of the company. (Balwani’s lawyers have denied his claims.)
This month, Davila ordered Holmes and Balwani to pay restitution of nearly $452 million to the victims of their crimes.
Before his sentence was announced in November, a tearful Holmes spoke in court in San Jose, California.
“I love Theranos. It was my life’s work,” he said. “The people I’m trying to connect with at Theranos are people I love and respect the most. I’m saddened by my failures.”
He went on to apologize to Theranos employees, investors and patients.
“I’m so sorry. I gave everything to build our company and save our company,” he said. “I regret my failures with every cell in my body.”