San Francisco | AFP
Former Silicon Valley star Elizabeth Holmes faces jail time after a judge denied her latest request for release while she appeals her conviction for fraud.
Holmes was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors with her Silicon Valleybased biotechnology company Theranos, which promised to revolutionize health diagnostics.
She was due to begin serving her sentence on April 27, but her lawyers filed a lastminute appeal on procedural grounds after an earlier attempt was denied.
On Tuesday, Judge Edward Davila dismissed the new petition and, in a separate decision, fined Holmes and his Theranos righthand man, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, to pay $452 million (about 2.2 billion reais at current exchange rates). to the victims of his fraud.
According to local press, Davila has not yet set a new date for her arrest and has recommended that she serve her sentence in a Texas women’s prison.
Holmes, 39, has been blamed for misleading investors into believing she had developed a revolutionary medical device.
She became a Silicon Valley star when she announced that her company was developing an easytouse kit that could cover a wide range of diagnoses with just a drop of blood.
His venture failed after The Wall Street Journal conducted an investigation into the validity of the tests.
Elizabeth Holmes had a child just before her trial and another after her conviction.