The founder of blood-testing company Theranos was supposed to report to prison in early April, but lawyers filed an appeal at the last minute. On Tuesday, the court dismissed the petition.
Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the blood-testing company Theranos who rose to infamy from a Silicon Valley pet, is to begin her prison sentence later this month.
He was supposed to report to prison at the end of last month, but his lawyers filed a last-minute appeal after a previous appeal was rejected.
Holmes, 39, had hoped to remain free while his appeal was heard in federal court. The appeal process can take up to one year.
However, an appeals court on Tuesday rejected the fresh appeal and ordered Holmes to report to prison on May 30.
Holmes raised hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and amassed vast fortunes for his pioneering blood-testing technology company, Theranos, but it ultimately turned out to be a scam.
A year ago in January, Holmes was found guilty of fraud. However, sentencing was postponed several times, and he finally received a prison sentence of more than 11 years last November. Since Holmes was expecting a child at the time, she was ordered to report to prison only in late April.
Holmes himself has denied the allegations and has appealed against the verdict.
According to media reports, US Judge Edward Davila recommended that Holmes serve her sentence in a women’s prison in Texas.
In a separate ruling, Davila ordered Holmes and his accomplice Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani to pay back $452 million to the victims of their fraud. They also include media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, to whom the two owe $125 million, according to the judge.
As recently as 2014, Holmes was hailed as the startup queen of Silicon Valley and compared to the late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. In the same year, Forbes magazine named her the world’s youngest female billionaire whose fortune was not inherited but self-made. The magazine estimated his net worth at the time at $4.5 billion.
Theranos markets testing technology that will detect cancer or diabetes, for example, from a few drops of blood taken from a patient’s fingertip.
The test device, named Edison, didn’t really work as it was supposed to. It was also revealed that Theranos did a large portion of its tests with equipment developed by other companies.
