A judge this Wednesday ordered Elizabeth Holmes to report to prison on May 30, dashing her hopes to avoid prison after her last-minute bid was denied a day earlier, CNN reported.
Judge Edward Davila ordered Holmes to report to the Bureau of Prisons by May 30 to begin serving her 11-year sentence for defrauding people who invested in her disgraced blood-testing startup Theranos. Holmes had filed a last-minute appeal to remain free on bail while she fought to overturn her conviction.
Attorneys for Holmes said that she needed to make preparations including medical and child-care arrangements ahead of beginning her sentence, resulting in Davila agreeing to the May 30 surrender date. Her ex-boyfriend and former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was convicted of fraud in a separate trial and reported to prison last month to begin serving out his nearly 13-year sentence. He also lost a last-minute appeal.
Theranos claimed to have a new technology that could accurately test for diseases using just a few drops of blood. The company raised $945 million from investors and was valued at some $9 billion at one point.
A Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 found that Theranos had only performed a small portion of the hundreds it tests it offered, resulting in questionable results. The WSJ also found that Theranos was relying on third-party manufactured devices from traditional blood testing companies rather than its own technology.
