Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has again delayed the start of her 11-year prison sentence for fraud charges, after appealing a previous decision that would have required her to turn herself in on 27 April.
Lawyers for Holmes, who is currently out on bail, informed US district judge Edward Davila on Wednesday that she will not be reporting to prison as scheduled, because she is appealing Davila’s ruling that she remain in custody while it is determined whether she should get a new trial.
Holmes, 39, was expected to serve her time in at a minimum-security prison camp in Houston, Texas. The appeal automatically delays her reporting date, and she will now remain out of prison until a court of appeals rules on her request.
The disgraced entrepreneur was convicted in January 2022 on four counts of fraud over her role in misleading investors as head of the failed blood-testing firm. Citing her two small children, lawyers for Holmes said she was unlikely to pose a flight risk and should be allowed to remain free while the appeals process continues. Davila had ruled against a delay in prison time, stating that a new trial or an overturning of the guilty verdict was unlikely.
Holmes filed her appeal in September and is seeking a new trial based on alleged wrongdoing from the prosecution, as well as a key government witness who expressed regret for his testimony and its role in her conviction. The witness, former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff later confirmed he stood by his testimony.
Holmes has had two children since she was indicted in 2018. Throughout the trial and as she awaited the deadline to turn herself in this week, Holmes has lived with her partner and the father of her children, hotel heir Billy Evans, in a $135m estate in Silicon Valley.
Her former business and romantic partner Sunny Balwani employed a similar strategy to avoid his own prison sentence, delaying his start date for a month while an appeal was considered.
His appeal was denied and he began his sentence on similar counts of fraud last week. Balwani, who was convicted on all 12 counts he was charged with, will serve 13 years.
Holmes’s looming prison sentence marks an end to the dramatic tale of Theranos – a company she founded after dropping out of Stanford University at 19 years old in 2003.
The company promised a revolutionary new technology that could run hundreds of health tests on just a drop of blood, and was once valued at more than $9bn as it attracted big-name backers like former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
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Theranos’s implosion began after reporting in the Wall Street Journal in 2015 revealed the company’s core technology was not working as advertised and that many tests were being run in outside labs using traditional methodology.
Holmes was ultimately convicted on four counts of defrauding investors, in a dramatic trial that included testimony from some of the high-profile backers, including former defense secretary James Mattis.
The Associated Press contributed reporting