Female billionaire fraudster starts life in prison

Elizabeth Holmes - a one-time Silicon Valley icon - will work a job that pays $0.12 an hour and uses a shared bathroom in a Texas prison.

On May 30, Elizabeth Holmes appeared at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, to begin serving an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors while running the blood testing company Theranos. Holmes' request for bail to appeal her sentence was rejected by a judge in the middle of this month.

Federal Prison Camp Bryan is a prison for more than 600 female inmates. The rules here are less strict than other prisons.

The prison has dormitory-style cells, shared bathrooms, few guards, and no fences, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. FPC Bryan houses mostly intellectual prisoners.

Elizabeth Holmes follows prison staff into Federal Prison Camp Bryan on May 30. Photo: AP

But according to Mark MacDougall, a former US federal prosecutor, life here would not be pleasant for Holmes. "I think the people who say it's pleasant have never been in here. This is not a place people would want to go if they could stay somewhere else. There's no privacy," MacDougall told CNN.

Inmates are required to work, earning between $0.12 and $1.15 an hour. Holmes is also required to wear a khaki uniform, a far cry from her usual black turtleneck. She is also not allowed to wear jewelry, except for a plain wedding ring and religious items. The value of these items cannot exceed $100.

MacDougall said Holmes will have many volunteer opportunities at FPC Bryan. For someone as educated as Holmes, a common choice is teaching. Holmes will also be able to see her children and family at FPC Bryan for a few hours on weekends and holidays.

"Anyone who says Holmes will have a pleasant, comfortable environment in prison is being unreasonable," MacDougall said.

Holmes has appeared on the cover of many major magazines and participated in conferences with celebrities such as former US President Bill Clinton. However, she is also a rare entrepreneur in Silicon Valley to be convicted of fraud. Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at the age of 19 to build Theranos and was once considered a female version of Steve Jobs thanks to the ambitious promise of technology to test for a variety of diseases with just a few drops of blood.

Investors, patients, and fans bought into the story. Theranos raised more than $700 million from investors, outwitting even the smartest people in Silicon Valley.

The incident came to light after a 2015 Wall Street Journal investigation found that Theranos had only performed about 12 of the hundreds of tests it claimed were proprietary, and the accuracy of the results was questioned. Theranos was later found to have used third-party equipment to perform traditional blood tests, instead of its own technology.

Theranos was once a startup valued at $9 billion, making Holmes the world's youngest self-made female billionaire in 2015 with a fortune of $4.5 billion. But now, both Theranos and Holmes are left with nothing.

The trial dragged on for years. By early 2022, Holmes was found guilty of four counts of fraud, effectively ending the tech icon's career. Former Theranos COO Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani was also convicted of fraud and served nearly 13 years in prison last month.

Ha Thu (according to CNN)

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