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Months after her conviction for Fraud and conspiracy, Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 11.25 years imprisonment. However, Elizabeth Holmes’s sentence isn’t without complications, as court documents showed the 38-year-old was, in fact, pregnant. By implication, the former biotechnology entrepreneur, who was convicted in January, would welcome her baby behind bars. This would be the second for the businesswoman, who already has one son with partner Billy Holmes Evans. The twosome welcomed the child in July 2021 in Redwood City, California.
Per court documents obtained by The Times, Elizabeth Holmes got pregnant after her January conviction. This would be the second time an incidence of her pregnancy would creep into her court proceedings. News of her first pregnancy first reached the court in March 2021. Then, her legal team filed court papers requesting they move her trial to a later date due to her pregnancy. The court complied, and her trial commenced in August 2021, shortly after her son’s arrival.
Elizabeth Holmes Found Pregnant Again Following Sentence
It appeared history was repeating itself as court documents confirmed another pregnancy, first disclosed in October 2022, in the heat of the criminal trial. However, Elizabeth Holmes would commence her sentence in a federal prison nonetheless for eleven counts of fraud stemming from false claims to investors and patients of her Silicon Valley company, Theranos.
The jury found Elizabeth guilty of four of the eleven charges leveled against her, including three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Meanwhile, they declared her not guilty of four charges while remaining deadlocked on the last three. On that note, the presiding Judge, Edward Davila, ruled that the mother of one would spend 135 months behind bars. She would also face three years of supervised release.
Elizabeth’s Criminal Case Dragged On For Years
Long before her sentence, Elizabeth Holmes was a Standford dropout who found fame in the business world through her supposed biotechnological invention dubbed The Edison. Her company claimed the machine could conduct tests with only minute quantities of blood, such as those from a pinprick. These claims earned her numerous investors. Additionally, she clinched millions of sales to unsuspecting patients and snagged Forbes recognition as the youngest self-made female billionaire in 2014.
Things took a downturn in 2015 after The Wall Street Journal‘s John Carreyrou initiated a secret investigation and discovered several fraudulent activities within Theranos. He published several articles detailing how the blood-testing invention gave inaccurate results and how the lab secretly used machines from other companies for most of its testing. This set the pace for the Elizabeth Holmes criminal trial. A federal grand jury indicted her in 2018, three years before her conviction and sentencing.
The story of Elizabeth Holmes’ fraudulent acts and her subsequent downfall became the basis for several hit movies, including the HBO documentary feature film, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley and the miniseries, The Dropout starring Amanda Seyfried.