Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Begins 11-Year Prison Sentence (bbc.com) 77
Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has begun her 11-year prison sentence after being convicted of four counts of fraud. The BBC reports: She will serve her term in a minimum-security prison in Texas. Holmes reported to the federal facility in Bryan, Texas, which holds between 500 and 700 inmates at any given time, on Tuesday. It is about 100 miles (160km) north of Houston, her hometown. Her arrival at the facility was confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which declined to give any more details about her confinement, citing privacy concerns.
There, the woman once billed as the world's youngest self-made billionaire might work alongside other inmates for between 12 cents (10p) and $1.15 (93p) an hour - much of which will go towards her court-mandated restitution payments. [...] The Texas prison camp where Holmes will serve time is a sprawling 37-acre facility. Most inmates there have been convicted of non-violent crimes, low-level drug dealing or white-collar offenses. According to the facility's handbook, life largely revolves around work and extracurricular activities that include foreign language, computer literacy or business courses.
Holmes had fought to stay out of prison while her legal appeal works its way through the courts. She argued a delay would allow her to raise "substantial questions" about the case that could warrant a new trial. Her defense team also argued that she should remain free to care for her children, one who is nearly two and the other three months old. The Wall Street Journal reported the prison has facilities where inmates can host gatherings and where children can play. Holmes and other mothers are allowed to hold their children in their lap and breastfeed their infants, according to official Bureau of Prison guidelines.
There, the woman once billed as the world's youngest self-made billionaire might work alongside other inmates for between 12 cents (10p) and $1.15 (93p) an hour - much of which will go towards her court-mandated restitution payments. [...] The Texas prison camp where Holmes will serve time is a sprawling 37-acre facility. Most inmates there have been convicted of non-violent crimes, low-level drug dealing or white-collar offenses. According to the facility's handbook, life largely revolves around work and extracurricular activities that include foreign language, computer literacy or business courses.
Holmes had fought to stay out of prison while her legal appeal works its way through the courts. She argued a delay would allow her to raise "substantial questions" about the case that could warrant a new trial. Her defense team also argued that she should remain free to care for her children, one who is nearly two and the other three months old. The Wall Street Journal reported the prison has facilities where inmates can host gatherings and where children can play. Holmes and other mothers are allowed to hold their children in their lap and breastfeed their infants, according to official Bureau of Prison guidelines.
Oh no (Score:4, Funny)
Anyway...
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Steep? That (insert very nasty word here) endangered people, embezzled millions and very likely will leave the prison as a rich woman barely a decade from now.
In the meantime, a few stories down, some people go to jail for more than a quarter century for running a pirate TV station.
Business courses (Score:2)
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How do you teach ethics? Either someone is OK with hurting others, or they are not.
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I dunno if you're unethical, but you're definitely pedantic.
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From your description the only reason you are not hurting people is that you can't be arsed to. This is pretty much unethical.
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Fl does not hate Disney central fl would no exist but for disney. When I moved to orlando in 85 it was mostly dirt roads. Every thing they have is because of Disney. DeFuchhead is going to bankrupt fl.
If they had ethics... (Score:3, Interesting)
Theranos's real problem was one layer of management higher than that college-dropout-cheerleader-figurehead-CEO-puppet they used as a scapegoat.
Any real medical device research company would have a Board stacked with experts in medical research and medical devices.
Instead Theranos had a board full of politicians and rich bankers that seemed from the beginning structured to ~~abuse~~ *use* their political connections to m
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Probably - but if it was anything like the engineering and computer science ethics courses I took, it's FAR more about avoiding the appearance of conflicts of interest that might hurt the shareholders than anything that normal people would consider ethics.
An actual example from one of the textbooks: if you work for a logging company you should definitely avoid attending the meetings of any sort of environmental protection or other group that is protesting your company's actions, or might be reasonably expe
Privacy concerns ? (Score:2)
Since when do prisoners have any rights to privacy. ?
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Ah.. So now prisoners aren't deserving of basic human rights?
Well obviously removal of liberty comes with the punishment. But anything beyond the punishment should not be infringed. The right to vote is an important one. But it could be a punishment for voter fraud for example or murder. I've no problem with state slavery for a murderer.
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Ah.. So now prisoners aren't deserving of basic human rights?
No, they aren't. If you want your rights then you have the responsibility to not commit crimes. Voting rights for prisoners is the dumbest fucking thing imaginable. So is basically all of the Bill of Rights.
Re: Privacy concerns ? (Score:2)
Prisoners are still human, you know. (Score:1)
The US declaration of independence disagrees with you there. Some rights are inalienable. The UN declaration of human rights says so too.
I say that punishment isn't, or at least should not be, about stripping a person of their humanity. That means discarding the person, and then what incentive do they have to try and get back into society's good graces?
Re: Prisoners are still human, you know. (Score:3, Informative)
Re: Privacy concerns ? (Score:2)
Voting rights for prisoners is the dumbest fucking thing imaginable.
Really? Care to provide a cogent explanation as to why?
Voting rights should be inalienable - even when talking about crimes like election fraud. Consider the following:
Systematically removing the voting rights from felons gives the government an incredibly powerful tool to maintain power - invent ways to turn dissenters into felons without voting rights.
Re: Privacy concerns ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
Think of the culture wars that had been long-building and came to a head in the 60's, which the government fought in part by criminalizing the possession of marijuana - a relatively cheap, safe recreational drug that had long been particularly popular among members of various counter-cultures.
How might that have gone differently if the government hadn't been routinely stripping voting rights from the portion of the population most invested in changing the system? As close as many elections are, stripping almost 1% of the population of their voting rights is enough to tilt quite a few elections. Especially when that population is disproportionately composed of activists. Nobody arrests a businessmen caught with a ounce of weed - but a protestor with a dime bag is fair game.
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> Voting rights for prisoners is the dumbest fucking thing imaginable.
So according to your logic Nelson Mandela should never have had the right to vote, right?
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Her arrival at the facility was confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which declined to give any more details about her confinement, citing privacy concerns
The prison's privacy not the prisoner. She has no right to privacy but the facility she is at does. A sentence is carried out at their executive authority and they may retain the means by which confinement is carried out. She could be in a small population wing, she could be in a mass incarceration, she could be in solitary for initial processing. There can be programs that she's in, there could be rotations she is in. Who knows? But the point is that the details of that are private and are not requir
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> Since when do prisoners have any rights to privacy. ?
Since forever. The punishment by putting someone in prison is the temporary removal of their freedom. That's it. Any prisoner still deserve humane treatment and human rights, including privacy.
Divorce usually starts from the non prisoner (Score:2)
Re:Divorce usually starts from the non prisoner (Score:4, Informative)
Her parents come from money, and have lived pretty well, but her father lost everything in the Enron scam. How he escaped prison is unknown.
The fact he's from the ruling class means he's been able to get a bunch of well paid gigs since then, but he won't be able to fund massive expensive legal campaigns.
Billy's parents can though.
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Having Children didn't work, nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing to see here. Typical person doing fraud, narcissistic behavior, refusing to admit any wrong doing and doing everything they can to escape any accountability and responsibility.
Go away, in prison, silently, we don't care.
It would be better... (Score:2)
>Go away, in prison, silently, we don't care.
It would be easier not to care if she hadn't been sent to a sprawling 37 acre club-med resort "prison". IF that is the stick, I might just go out and defraud billions too.
gotta love the "equitable" gender treatment (Score:1)
Gotta love how the expectation is for preferential treatment due to her gender.
Glad to see equality is at least starting to become equitable in this fashion.
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I don't quite see its equitable her partner is serving a 13 year sentence.
Balwani is already serving a 13-year prison sentence in California for his role in the scheme.
well at least its not the 65% sentence men usually get https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
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Her partner had two strikes against him.
He is also non-white.
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Orange is the new Black (Score:2)
Will she get a orange turtleneck in prison?
She can ... (Score:2)
The only time executives go to jail (Score:3)
Is when they significantly hurt shareholder value. I'm not sure if a better example of how the country actually works than seeing her get an 11 year sentence for defrauding shareholders.
Big deal (Score:3, Interesting)
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Still has a higher standard of living than half the people in this country.
I remember seeing a documentary about poverty in Japan, and they interviewed this old guy who said he would periodically commit the minimum crime required to get a ~1 year custodial sentence (it was something stupid like stealing a bottle of water). He said he quite liked prison because everything was free and there were other prisoners to talk to (old people loneliness is a big problem in Japan). During his time incarcerated he would be saving his pension so that at the end he would have a decent amount of
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What do you need?
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"Proud feminazi Liz demolishes glass cell wall
Despite bravely following our mantra of "I'm just a weak woman, it's his fault" and "I've just had a child, how DARE you!", defiant Liz succumbed to our horrible patriarchal justice system by smashing her way into the man-dominated bastion of our prison system ( 93% male, why aren't they all there, eh? ) and took her place in the vicious toxic male-run(* check this Ed) torture camp of the minimum-security women's prison FPC Bryan, o
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You did not answer my question. Given the event that a scumbag grifter gets put to prison, your reaction is to rant against women. Why? What needs do you have unmet that triggers that?
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I am not saying anything against real feminists, because I am one, and campaigning for equality of opportunity is a noble goal.
I am ranting against feminazis, women who hate men and act against them and encourage others to do so.
So should everyone who opposes sexism.
Prison lifestyle coverage (Score:2)
Maybe it's just my non-existent note-taking, but there are only two high profile prisoners that I remember getting this kind of coverage. Specifically, I mean stories detailing what prison life will be like for them. They are the two women on this list of 15 jailed CEOs.
https://blog.cheapism.com/busi... [cheapism.com]
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I remember puff pieces about Bernie Madoff in prison that read like they were trying to rehabilitate him in the public eye. Something about him hoarding and gouging other prisoners for food, for example, presented as if the behavior were somehow charming.
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Bryan is not so bad (Score:2)
I'm amazed she didn't flee (Score:2)
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I read that she gave up her passport, but I couldn't find any information about her being subjected to electronic monitoring. And the recent article in some New York paper where she willingly talked with a reporter didn't seem to indicate any monitoring on her. I thought she would refuse to report to jail and would flee by boat to Vladivostock where the Russians would use her for propaganda purposes. Her options to flee were really limited because she has no real skills or technical abilities and countries like Cuba and China would likely just turn her back to the USA as a favor since she can offer them nothing by staying there, but sending her back to the USA might generate some good will.
She's doing ~9 years (federal prison has "good time" credit) in a relatively comfy prison, and then she's free, under 50, and able to live in the US with her two young children and rich-person social network.
You really think she'd choose to flee to Russia instead?
easy time (Score:3)
A minimum security prison with just a few hundred inmates, the punishment will mainly be the humiliation factor of having to be there. Probably she will share a room with someone and have plenty of money to spend on upgrades. No way she will serve anywhere near 11 years, I expect 5 at most and then probation.
Re:easy time (Score:4, Informative)
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Not selfish at all... (Score:2)
that she should remain free to care for her children, one who is nearly two and the other three months old.
You mean the two kids she had to try and use as a shield to protect her from conviction/going to prison? That she conceived AFTER she knew she was most likely going to prison? Because in her late 30's she SUDDENLY decided to have kids?
Yeah, those kids will be better off with you behind bars.
Re: Cruel (Score:1)
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It is excessively cruel to put people in prison for non-violent crimes. It should be a measure to apply exclusively to the most violent and dangerous of us, who pose a threat to the safety of others.
The repercussions of her fraud were indeed violent - people died or were maimed from actions taken or not taken because of bad test results, and she was well aware that would happen.
In ancient times architects were put to death if a building collapsed. We don't do that now, but it's the same line of reasoning.
That poor woman had no chance in life (Score:2)
Her father was a vice president at Enron, her mother worked for Congress, how the hell could she possibly not end up in a world of crime?
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That she was doomed to a life of crime goes without saying. But she holds a special place in our hearts for getting convicted.
Shades of Gerard (Score:2)
Her rise was meteoric, and now the very same people who elevated her so high (totally irrationally, due to identity politics) are crowing over her demise.
Rene Gerard really knew what he was talking about. People love a good scapegoat, but they have to make it a demigod first for it to work best.
Disgraced (Score:2)
EVERY SINGLE news story I have seen about this calls her "disgraced." Why? She is a criminal, like any other criminal, who is going to prison. She was not convicted of lacking grace. Why do they all put this assertion about how everyone ELSE feels about her into news stories? What's more, have they ever used this language about a male?