A federal judge today sentenced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to more than 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in the now-defunct blood testing company.
“What went wrong? This is sad because Ms. Holmes is brilliant,” said U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila, according to media reports from NBC News, Variety and more. Davila went on to say that failure is normal, but failure by fraud is not OK.
In January, a federal jury in San Jose, California found Holmes guilty of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Holmes and her company Theranos once generated a great deal of buzz over claims that they were set to revolutionize blood testing with technology that could analyze tiny amounts of blood. Forbes in 2015 even recognized Holmes as America’s richest self-made woman based on Theranos’ multibillion-dollar valuation at the time.
Wall Street Journal investigative reporting, though, eventually debunked the claims Holmes was making about Theranos’ technology. The downward spiral culminated in the 2018 shutdown of the company, with Holmes and former Theranos president Sunny Balwani facing criminal charges over what federal prosecutors described as a massive fraud.
Balwani, also convicted of fraud, is scheduled for sentencing early next month.