Elizabeth Holmes, a former biotech entrepreneur and media darling was given an 11-year prison sentence on Friday for defrauding investors with false claims that she had revolutionized blood testing.
Officially, Holmes received 135 months in prison time for his role in running the fraudulent biotechnology company Theranos. The Justice Department had asked for a 15-year sentence for the disgraced founder and $800 million in restitution to be paid.
Considering the scope of Holmes’ fraud, federal prosecutors argue that a sentence of 180 months in prison would be appropriate. This would serve as “just punishment” for Holmes’ crimes and serve as a deterrent to others.
Holmes, who is expecting her second child, was found guilty of four counts of wire fraud in January after a lengthy trial that lasted several months. According to The Wall Street Journal, she has 14 days to file an appeal of her conviction.
After convincing investors that her company’s portable blood analyzer could perform comprehensive blood tests with mere drops of blood, Holmes found herself in hot water. Once worth $9 billion, her empire has since collapsed, but in 2014, Forbes called her “the youngest self-made woman billionaire in the world.”
Former Secretaries of State George Shultz and James Mattis are among the high-profile figures who have backed Holmes’s business venture. Additionally, Holmes had a strong relationship with the Clintons, even hosting a 2016 Clinton fundraiser.
Holmes’s defense team claimed at trial that she lacked experience and argued that “she was merely a young, nave, the ambitious founder who relied too much on others who gave her bad advice,” as reported by The New York Times. Holmes also made false allegations of abuse against Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and the former president of Theranos, but their text messages suggested otherwise.