Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes attempted to flee the country after she was found guilty on multiple charges last year, attorneys said Thursday.
The disgraced biotechnology entrepreneur was convicted on four counts of wire fraud in early January 2022 and was sentenced to 11 years in prison in November. Federal prosecutors revealed in a court document responding to a request from Holmes for release pending appeal that she “booked an international flight to Mexico” in January 2022 without scheduling a return trip and only canceled the purchase after the defense counsel was notified.
“The government anticipates Defendant will note in reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled,” the document added, “but it is difficult to know with certainty what Defendant would have done had the government not intervened.”
The document said that William “Billy” Evans, who married Holmes in 2019, allegedly departed the country “on the scheduled date with a one-way ticket and did not return until approximately six weeks later, returning from a different continent.” Officials asserted that Holmes “continues to show no remorse to her victims” and is currently seeking to “loosen the restrictions placed on her region of travel based upon vague references to her partner’s work commitments.” She was also granted a lenient amount of time to begin her prison sentence because she and Evans, an heir to a sizable hospitality fortune, are expecting their second child.
“Defendant, however, cannot meet the stringent standard for release pending appeal mandated by Congress. There are not two systems of justice, one for the wealthy and one for the poor, there is one criminal justice system in this country. And under that system, the time has come for Elizabeth Holmes to answer for her crimes committed nearly a decade ago,” the document continued.
Holmes deceived investors into believing that her company’s portable blood analyzer could conduct comprehensive medical tests with mere drops of blood. Her collapsed empire once secured a $9 billion valuation, and she was previously touted by Forbes as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire.
The Stanford University dropout managed to attract several prominent political and business leaders to back her firm, including former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Defense Secretary James Mattis. She also had close ties to the Clinton family and hosted a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Production delays in Theranos machines led the company to secretly use traditional blood testing machines manufactured by Siemens and other established firms to complete tests for their partners. In the absence of a functioning device, Holmes still convinced board members, prospective investors, and journalists that her company’s product had been finished.
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former business and romantic partner of Holmes, has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison. Holmes tried to blame Balwani for abuse during her trial, even though text messages between the pair showed a meaningful relationship despite Balwani’s reputation for treating employees poorly.