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Biotech Crime

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.

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Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Begins 11-Year Prison Sentence

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  • Oh no (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @05:44PM (#63562503)

    Anyway...

  • Do they teach ethics?
    • How do you teach ethics? Either someone is OK with hurting others, or they are not.

      • Business ethics means, what things should you avoid doing to keep people from boycotting you (or partners not trusting you). For example, Disney failed their recent business ethics challenge because now Florida hates them. Chic-fil-a failed at business ethics because they got a massive boycott.
        • 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.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      If they cared about ethics, they'd look higher up in Theranos's management chain.

      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

    • 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

  • Since when do prisoners have any rights to privacy. ?

    • 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

    • > 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.

  • But now he proved a useless decoy, how soon until she ditches both Billy Evans and his kids. Like she did to her long time boyfriend in court.
    • by youngone ( 975102 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @06:53PM (#63562635)
      Billy's parents are the ones with all the money. She'll need them forever.
      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.
  • by Tyr07 ( 8900565 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @06:07PM (#63562545)

    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.

    • >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 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.

    • 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]

    • She's getting preferential treatment due to being a member of America's ruling class. Her gender helps though, I'm sure.
  • Will she get a orange turtleneck in prison?

  • ... wave goodbye to those hip turtlenecks. Orange is the new black.

  • by Hadlock ( 143607 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @06:41PM (#63562611) Homepage Journal

    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)

    by wyattstorch516 ( 2624273 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @06:55PM (#63562641)
    Still has a higher standard of living than half the people in this country.
    • 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

  • 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]

    • by tragedy ( 27079 )

      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.

  • I did 4 years just south of there.
  • 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 coun
    • She did try to flee. They stopped her before she was able to.
    • 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?

  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Tuesday May 30, 2023 @09:03PM (#63562913)

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

    • That she was doomed to a life of crime goes without saying. But she holds a special place in our hearts for getting convicted.

  • 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.

  • 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?

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