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Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, began serving her 11-year prison sentence on Tuesday, after several attempts to delay her time in jail, The Associated Press reported.
The 39-year-old was convicted in January 2022 of defrauding patients and investors with claims that her new technology could trace serious diseases with just a few drops of blood. She is set to serve her sentence at a federal minimum-security, women’s prison camp in Texas.
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Holmes has filed several failed appeals to delay or reduce her sentence since her conviction, with her lawyers arguing that that she had “two very young children” to look after.
Her son was born in July 2021, weeks before the start of her trial, and her 3-month-old daughter was conceived after her conviction in January 2022.
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Theranos was once valued at $9 billion, and Holmes, who had a stake of $4.5 billion in the company, was declared the youngest self-made female billionaire in the U.S. by Forbes.
But Theranos collapsed after a series of Wall Street Journal articles in 2015 found its technology produced inaccurate results.
Holmes and former Theranos CEO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani have been ordered to pay $452 million to victims of the blood-testing startup’s fraud.