An appeals court has rejected convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes’ bid to remain out of prison while she appeals the convictions against her.
Holmes, the founder and CEO of failed blood-testing company Theranos, will have to report to prison, leaving behind her current partner and her two young children, both of whom she had after being charged with fraud. A date has not been set for when Holmes will have to report for prison, the Associated Press reported.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision comes nearly three weeks after Holmes’ legal team successfully delayed her sentence from her original start date of April 27.
“Ms. Holmes was on bail at the time the motion was filed,” said court documents from the previous decision. “Therefore, that bail automatically remains in effect until the Ninth Circuit has ruled on her motion.”
In an additional Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila ordered Holmes to pay $452 million in restitution to those harmed by her crimes. She is being held jointly liable for the amount along with her former boyfriend and Theranos’ ex-president, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was tried after Holmes but is already imprisoned, according to the Associated Press.
Holmes had previously asked U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila to allow her to remain free while she appealed the conviction against her, but in a ruling filed in early April, Davila ruled that the part of the conviction Holmes is appealing will probably not be overturned. Holmes is challenging her conviction based on the evidence presented at trial regarding whether Theranos products “worked as promised,” NBC News reported.
“Whether the jury heard more or less evidence that tended to show the accuracy and reliability of Theranos technology does not diminish the evidence the jury heard of other misrepresentations Ms. Holmes made to investors,” Davila ruled.
Davila noted in his ruling that Holmes’ conviction wasn’t just based on whether her products worked but also related to the company’s finances and her false claims to investors about what her product did.
Davila did say in his ruling that he didn’t believe Holmes was a flight risk, even though federal prosecutors revealed earlier this year that Holmes and her husband purchased one-way tickets to Mexico in January 2022 – the same month she was convicted. The tickets were canceled only after the defense counsel was notified.
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“The government anticipates Defendant will note in reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled,” prosecutors wrote, “but it is difficult to know with certainty what Defendant would have done had the government not intervened.”
Holmes’ husband, William “Billy” Evans, allegedly used his ticket and returned six weeks later from a different continent.
In that same document, prosecutors noted that Holmes “continues to show no remorse to her victims.”