Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison for multiple counts of fraud on Friday. Court filings revealed she is pregnant with her second child.
She became pregnant after being convicted in January, The New York Times reported. She gave birth to her first child in August 2021, before her criminal trial began.
Her first pregnancy was disclosed in March 2021, when her legal team and prosecutors requested that the judge move her trial’s start date because of her July due date.
Holmes, who was the subject of an HBO documentary and Hulu ministries, is known for swindling millions from investors for her Silicon Valley blood-testing company.
Judge Edward Davila ruled that the former CEO of a healthcare start-up would spend 135 months behind bars and serve three years of supervised release.
Holmes was tried on 11 counts of fraud, and a jury found her guilty of four of the charges; three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Holmes duped investors out of millions by falsely claiming that the company’s technology was able to conduct hundreds of medical tests by using just a few drops of blood.
In 2015, Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrou said that the machine Holmes was selling – The Edison — did not do what she claimed it did and that Theranos was actually using outside technology and other subterfuge to fake positive test results. The allegations led to a federal investigator and Holmes being indicted in 2018.
Holmes’ attorneys argued that their client was naïve, and didn’t intend to defraud investors. And Holmes herself testified that she was clouded at the time because she was being sexually, psychologically, and emotionally abused by former Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and co-defendant.
Balwani was convicted of 12 counts of fraud this past summer and will likely be sentenced after Holmes.
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