Elizabeth Holmes enters Texas prison to begin 11-year sentence for Theranos blood-testing hoax
- The disgraced CEO is now in custody at a minimum security facility, leaving behind her two young children
- Holmes had been out on bail, fighting to remain free while she appealed against her January 2022 conviction for fraud and conspiracy
Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is in custody at a Texas prison where she could spend the next 11 years for overseeing a blood-testing hoax that became a parable about greed and hubris in Silicon Valley, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Holmes, 39, on Tuesday entered a federal women’s prison camp located in Bryan, Texas – where the federal judge who sentenced Holmes in November recommended she be incarcerated. The minimum-security facility is about 150km (93 miles) northwest of Houston, where Holmes grew up aspiring to become a technology visionary along the lines of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
As she begins her sentence, Holmes is leaving behind two young children – a son born in July 2021 a few weeks before the start of her trial and a three-month old daughter who was conceived after a jury convicted her on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.
Holmes has been free on bail since then, most recently living in the San Diego area with the children’s father, William “Billy” Evans. The couple met in 2017 around the same time Holmes was under investigation for the collapse of Theranos, a start-up she founded after dropping out of Stanford University when she was just 19.
While she was building up Theranos, Holmes grew closer to Ramesh, “Sunny” Balwani, who would become her romantic partner as well as an investor and fellow executive in the Palo Alto, California, company.