Theranos Founder Elizabeth Homes Has Sentence Reduced By Two Years
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, has already had around two years knocked off her prison sentence, according to federal records.
Holmes reported to federal prison in Bryan, Texas, back in May to begin serving an original sentence of 11 years and three months for defrauding investors.
But the Bureau of Prisons now has her release date listed as Decemeber 29, 2032, which would be a total of nine years and seven months.
The bureau confirmed the release date to HuffPost, noting that all inmates can reduce their time through good behaviour. Some can also do so by completing certain programmes like treatment for substance abuse, vocational training or mentoring.
A spokesperson declined to offer more details on Holmes’ reduction, citing inmate privacy and security concerns.
Almost a decade ago, Holmes made a splash with Theranos by claiming she had crafted a small machine capable of running a wide array of medical tests using just one drop of a patient’s blood, while standard testing usually required vials to be taken and analysed by different machines. Forbes put her on its cover, painting her as yet another Silicon Valley wunderkind.
She raised money — nearly $1 billion overall — from billionaires including Rupert Murdoch, Betsy DeVos and the Walton family.
In reality, the Theranos machine was wildly inaccurate, and prosecutors successfully argued that Holmes knew it. After an 18-week trial, jurors returned a guilty verdict on four out of 11 counts, convinced that Holmes purposefully misled investors with doctored financial reports.
Holmes was also ordered to pay back $452 million to her investors, starting with payments of $250 per month after her prison term — a sum she claims that she cannot afford.
Her case had been delayed by the pandemic and her pregnancies. Holmes shares two children under the age of three with her husband, Billy Evans, a hotel heir.
NPR reported in May that Holmes has not exhausted all of her options for appealing her case.