Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes heads to prison after losing bail appeal

She will begin to serve an 11-year sentence after being found guilty of defrauding investors who believed in her promises to revolutionise health care

Former Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes deceived investors in so many different ways, the judge presiding over her trial said. AP

Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison as scheduled on April 27, a judge ruled, rejecting her request to remain free on bail as she appeals her fraud conviction.

The decision on Monday by US district judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, is probably his last in the case which he has handled since Holmes was indicted in 2018.

Judge Davila presided over the Theranos founder’s four-month trial in 2021 and sentenced her in November to serve 11 years and three months in jail for deceiving investors in her blood-testing start-up.

Legal experts said Holmes’s bid to remain free during an appeals process that might take two years was a long shot.

She is expected to make one final request for bail from the San Francisco-based federal appeals court, which she has also asked to overturn her conviction.

Mr Davila ruled that even if Holmes won an appeals court ruling faulting him for allowing evidence at trial challenging the accuracy and reliability of her start-up's technology, she had deceived investors in so many different ways that such a decision was not expected to require a reversal or new trial on all the fraud counts she was convicted of.

“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 had made to investors,” he wrote.

Seth Kretzer, a criminal defence lawyer not involved in the case, said Holmes stood little to no chance at the appeals court.

Mr Davila made her conviction “bullet-proof” by giving her lawyers wide latitude to make her full defence, which is why her trial took so long, he said.

To justify her request for bail, Holmes said she had two young children, adding that she continued to work on new inventions and had raised “substantial questions” of law or facts in her appeal that could win her a new trial.

At a hearing last month, Mr Davila was most interested in an argument prosecutors made that there was a risk Holmes might try to flee, based on a one-way plane ticket to Mexico for her that was purchased while she was on trial.

Holmes’s lawyer explained that she and her partner Billy Evans planned a trip to attend a wedding with hopes that she would be acquitted and could relax for an extended holiday with no defined return date.

Ultimately the plane ticket did not factor into Monday’s ruling.

“Booking international travel plans for a criminal defendant in anticipation of a complete defence victory is a bold move, and the failure to promptly cancel those plans after a guilty verdict is a perilously careless oversight,” Mr Davila said of the plane ticket.

The incident invited “greater scrutiny” of Holmes, he wrote, adding that he concluded the purchase “while ill-advised, was not an attempt to flee the country”.

Holmes's lawyers Lance Wade and Kevin Downey did not immediately respond to emails outside regular business hours seeking comment on the ruling.

Mr Davila previously denied a request for bail pending appeal sought by Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former president of Theranos and Holmes’s former boyfriend, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison after being convicted of fraud. The appeals court upheld Mr Davila’s decision.

The case is USA v Holmes, 18-cr-00258, US District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).