Elizabeth Holmes, the onetime superstar entrepreneur who descended into Silicon Valley infamy after her blood-testing company, Theranos, was revealed to have touted false claims about its technology, was sentenced to 11.25 years in prison on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Edward Davila delivered the sentence in a packed courtroom, according to journalists present at the hearing, with Holmes, who is pregnant, responding in tears, “I tried to realize my dream too quickly and did too many things at the same time. . . . I regret my failings with every cell in my body.”
The 38-year-old, whose rise and fall has been the subject of a number of books, podcasts, and TV projects—including John Carreyrou’s best seller, Bad Blood, and the Hulu miniseries The Dropout—was convicted of investor fraud back in January. A jury determined that she had willingly deceived backers about the underlying technology behind Theranos’s rapid blood tests. She is ordered to begin her prison sentence in April.
Holmes’s origin story, as a turtleneck-wearing Stanford dropout with a supposedly brilliant vision, had captivated the tech press, with the founder gracing endless magazine covers and being heralded as the next Steve Jobs before cracks in her story began to appear, notably via Carreyrou’s bombshell reporting in the Wall Street Journal.
Friday’s sentence was not as severe as it could’ve been. Prosecutors in the case had been asking for 15 years.
Her former boyfriend and business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who was convicted on 12 counts of fraud in July, is expected to be sentenced in December.
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