Elizabeth Holmes allegedly bought a one-way ticket to Mexico in an effort to flee the country after she was convicted of fraud, prosecutors claim.
via People:
Holmes, 38, was found guilty in January 2022 of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She was tried on 11 counts of fraud for falsifying the results of blood tests conducted through her startup, Theranos. In November, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Though she has appealed her conviction before her sentencing starts on April 27, prosecutors state in court documents that she should go to prison now because she is a flight risk and made “an attempt to flee the country” last year, per multiple outlets.
“The government became aware on January 23, 2022, that Defendant Holmes booked an international flight to Mexico departing on January 26, 2022, without a scheduled return trip,” prosecutors allege in the filing. “Only after the government raised this unauthorized flight with defense counsel was the trip canceled.”
Prosecutors say in court documents they expect Holmes to “reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled”, however, prosecutors say “it is difficult to know with certainty” if she would have left without the government stepping in.
They add that “the incentive to flee has never been higher” and she “has the means to act on that incentive.”
Holmes’ lawyers alleged in an email that she booked the flight before her conviction and planned to attend a friend’s wedding in Mexico if she wasn’t found guilty.
For now, Holmes resides in a $13,000 per month estate.
An attorney for Holmes did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
As she was sentenced to 11 years in prison last year, it was revealed in court documents obtained by The New York Times that Holmes is pregnant with her second child.
Holmes, the subject of an HBO documentary as well as a Hulu miniseriesstarring Amanda Seyfried, welcomed her first child in August 2021, before her criminal trial began.
Birth records showed that Holmes and her partner Billy Evans welcomed a baby named William Holmes Evans on July 10 in Redwood City, California, according to ABC News.
Holmes first rose to prominence in 2014 as the founder and CEO of healthcare start-up Theranos, which duped investors out of millions by falsely purporting that its technology could run hundreds of medical tests using just a few drops of blood.
In 2015, Wall Street Journal journalist John Carreyrou reported that the machine Holmes was selling — dubbed The Edison — did not actually work and that the company was using outside technology and other subterfuge to fake positive test results. Federal authorities then investigated Holmes, indicting her in 2018.
During her trial, Holmes’ defense attorneys sought to portray her as naïve, saying she didn’t mean to defraud investors. Her attorney, Kevin Downey, told jurors that Holmes never cashed out any stock even as the company’s fortunes tumbled.
Holmes testified in her own defense, saying her judgment was clouded during the time in question because of alleged abuse she endured during her relationship with former Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and co-defendant.
Balwani was convicted of 12 counts of fraud in July. He was sentenced to 13 years in November.
Did she really think that was going to work?
