Elizabeth Holmes sentenced to 11 years in prison for her Theranos fraud

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of disgraced blood-testing company Theranos, has been found guilty on three counts of wire fraud, as well as a count of conspiracy to commit fraud along with her co-founder Sunny Balwani.

On November 18th, 2022, she was sentenced to 135 months, or about 11 and a half years, in prison for defrauding 10 victims out of $121 million. She is appealing the ruling. However, a judge has determined that she and Balwani owe the victims of their fraud $452 million.

Theranos was once valued as high as $9 billion, and Holmes was a darling of Silicon Valley, sporting black turtlenecks that prompted comparisons to Steve Jobs.

That changed after John Carreyrou’s exposé was published in The Wall Street Journal. In that article, Carreyrou wrote that Theranos was using its own device for only a handful of tests and that other employees were concerned that the device wasn’t accurate.