A federal appeals court has affirmed the fraud convictions of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her former business partner and ex-boyfriend Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Holmes is serving an 11-year prison sentence with an expected release date of 2032.
The New York Post reports that in a significant legal setback for Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of fraudulent blood-testing startup Theranos, a three-judge panel for the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected her bid to overturn her fraud conviction on Monday. The court also upheld the conviction of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’ former president and Holmes’ ex-lover.
In 2022, Holmes and Balwani were found guilty of defrauding investors in Theranos, a company once valued at $9 billion. The appeals court decision comes less than two weeks after Holmes gave a tearful interview to People magazine, describing her prison stint as “hell and torture.” In her interview, she expressed the emotional toll of prison visits with her two young children, stating that watching them leave through the secured glass door each week “shatters [her] world every single time.” Despite her conviction, Holmes maintained her innocence during the interview.
Following the appellate court’s ruling, Holmes’ legal options have narrowed significantly. She can now petition for another review of her case or attempt to bring the matter before the Supreme Court. However, legal experts consider both options to be long shots, with the lost appeal likely being her best chance at overturning the conviction.
Holmes, now 41, is currently serving an 11-year sentence at a minimum-security, all-female prison in Texas, with an expected release date of 2032. She was also ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to investors she defrauded, including many prominent people such as Rupert Murdoch.
Once hailed as a visionary entrepreneur and dubbed the next Steve Jobs for her bold vision and signature black turtlenecks, Holmes founded Theranos at the age of 19 after dropping out of Stanford University. She led the company for 15 years, claiming that Theranos had developed a groundbreaking proprietary device capable of rapidly delivering results for over 200 health tests.
However, in 2015, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou exposed that the blood tests were not being run on proprietary devices, but instead on commercial blood analyzers that had been modified to handle small amounts of blood. This revelation led to the unraveling of Theranos and subsequent charges of civil-securities fraud against the company, Holmes, and Balwani in 2018.
During her trial, which began in August 2021 and lasted nearly four months, more than 30 witnesses, including Holmes herself, testified. The jury ultimately convicted Holmes on three counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy out of the 11 total charges she faced.
Read more at the New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
