Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of blood-testing company Theranos, went to Burning Man and burned an effigy of Theranos after the company went bust in 2018.
Holmes revealed what she did after her company failed in an interview with The New York Times, her first since 2016 when her company was still the darling of Silicon Valley and the media thanks to her role as the youngest female tech billionaire.
“There was an incredible sense of grief because I’d given everything to it, my whole life, since I’d been 18,” she said about the failure of Theranos.
A date for Holmes’ trial was set the following year, in 2019, and prosecutors began building their case against Holmes for defrauding investors by claiming her blood testing device provided dozens of tests on a single drop of blood. Meanwhile, Holmes and her partner Billy Evans, who is the father of her two children, spent the next six months in an RV traveling the country, sleeping at campgrounds and Walmart parking lots, the Times reported. Holmes worked on her defense between outdoor yoga sessions and hikes in national parks.
Holmes is currently out of prison as she appeals her sentence after a judge approved a last-minute appeal in late April. Holmes was supposed to report for prison on April 27 after being convicted of four counts of fraud in 2022.
“Ms. Holmes was on bail at the time the motion was filed,” court documents said. “Therefore, that bail automatically remains in effect until the Ninth Circuit has ruled on her motion.”
Holmes had previously asked U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila to allow her to remain free while she appealed the conviction against her, but in a ruling filed in early April, Davila ruled that the part of the conviction Holmes is appealing will probably not be overturned. Holmes is challenging her conviction based on the evidence presented at trial regarding whether Theranos products “worked as promised,” NBC News reported.
“Whether the jury heard more or less evidence that tended to show the accuracy and reliability of Theranos technology does not diminish the evidence the jury heard of other misrepresentations Ms. Holmes made to investors,” Davila ruled.
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Davila noted in his ruling that Holmes’ conviction wasn’t just based on whether her products worked but also related to the company’s finances and her false claims to investors about what her product did.
Davila did say in his ruling that he didn’t believe Holmes was a flight risk, even though federal prosecutors revealed earlier this year that Holmes and her husband purchased one-way tickets to Mexico in January 2022 – the same month she was convicted. The tickets were canceled only after the defense counsel was notified.
“The government anticipates Defendant will note in reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled,” prosecutors wrote, “but it is difficult to know with certainty what Defendant would have done had the government not intervened.”
Holmes’ husband, William “Billy” Evans, allegedly used his ticket and returned six weeks later from a different continent.
In that same document, prosecutors noted that Holmes “continues to show no remorse to her victims.”