In January, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of wire fraud and deliberately misleading investors. Now, 10 months later, she has finally received her sentence: 11.25 years in prison and 3 years of supervised release, according to Law360 reporter Dorothy Atkins. Judge Edward Davila will schedule a follow-up hearing to determine what Holmes owes in restitution.
According to Atkins, Judge Davila calculated the sentence based on the defrauding of 10 investor victims—among them Rupert Murdoch and the family of former secretary of education Betsy DeVos—for a grand total of $385 million. Among the victims are Rupert Murdoch and the family of Betsy DeVos. Per NBC News reporter Scott Budman, Judge Davila said federal sentencing guidelines indicated that Holmes should serve 11 to 14 years in prison.
Ahead of today’s sentencing hearing, more than 140 people, including New Jersey senator Cory Booker, wrote letters to Judge Davila asking for leniency. Some of the letters were filed as late as last night, Judge Davila noted. Holmes, who arrived heavily pregnant to her hours-long hearing, remained stoic as attorneys on both sides attempted to sway the judge’s final decision.
Holmes was once considered a Silicon Valley wunderkind—a Stanford dropout with an idea big enough to save lives and change healthcare forever. Through her infamous start-up Theranos, Holmes set out to create an at-home testing device that could diagnose hundreds of diseases with a single drop of blood. The glaring problem, of course, is that the technology to achieve such a feat doesn’t exist. Even when the company was valued at $9 billion, the device—proudly named the Edison in an homage to the prolific inventor Thomas Edison—was medically useless.
