Elizabeth Holmes Appeals Fraud Conviction

Elizabeth Holmes is appealing a 2022 fraud conviction where she was sentenced to 11 years for defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company, Theranos.

CNN reports that Holmes is serving her sentence at a minimum-security facility in Southern Texas. She is not expected to appear in a California court for the appeal.

In 2018, federal prosecutors charged Holmes and her former partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, with defrauding investors, doctors, and patients. The pair ran Theranos, a company that marketed a machine that was supposed to deliver more accurate results than standardized blood tests.

Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' appeal will be heard at a federal courthouse in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The hearing arrives one year after Holmes began a more than 11-year sentence at a Texas prison for defrauding investors.

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In a court filing from November, Holmes’ attorneys said the prosecution failed to prove that Holmes cheated investors of Theranos. The extensive paperwork laid bare this information.

“The public narrative regarding the spectacle of Theranos’ downfall is that the company’s technology simply did not work and Holmes knew it,” said Holmes’ attorneys. “But Holmes’ intent and knowledge on this central question were intensely contested at trial. Substantial evidence showed that Holmes and Theranos’ scientists believed in good faith that Theranos had developed technology that could accurately run virtually any blood test.”

Per ABC News, Holmes’ attorneys also appealed a judge’s decision to permit testimony from Kingshuk Das, ex-Theranos clinical lab director. The attorneys claim that Das was used as a source of information about critical events rather than as an expert witness.

“This is still a reminder to Silicon Valley that the government is going to prosecute these cases very vigorously and continue to send the message that the ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it culture’ is not going to work if you cross over from self-belief into fraud,” said legal analyst Steven Clark to NBC Bay Area News.

Holmes was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison on Nov. 18, 2022. According to an online database, her projected release date is Aug. 1, 2032.