Holmes, who ran the blood-testing start-up Theranos, was initially convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in January 2022. She was ordered to serve more than 11 years in prison, and her sentence was scheduled to begin on April 27. However, Holmes asked to remain free while her appeal is considered, a request that the appeals court denied on Tuesday.
Beyond serving time, Holmes and Balwani are on the hook for $425 million. That’s a little more than half of the $800 million the federal government had previously asked for, according to court filings reviewed by theJeff Coopersmith, Balwani’s lawyer, told the newspaper that he and his client “respectfully disagree with the district court’s restitution order, but even more fundamentally, the guilty verdict.
Theranos was founded in 2003 by Holmes, with Balwani acting as the company’s chief operating officer. It claimed to have invented blood tests that used just small amounts of blood to provide rapid and accurate results—but those promises were later proved to be false. While at one point worth $4.5 billion, Holmes’s net worthNow, as Holmes works to overturn her conviction, she’ll have to do so from behind bars.