The judge agreed with Elizabeth Holmes’s request to postpone the start of her 11-year prison term, so the disgraced tech tycoon convicted of fraud will not be going to prison on Thursday.
After a four-month trial, Holmes, 39, the founder of Theranos, was found guilty on three counts of investment fraud and one count of conspiracy in November. He was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison.
Theranos, a Silicon Valley darling, was exposed as having faulty technology that made false claims about its ability to diagnose dozens of ailments with a single blood sample.
It has been alleged that Holmes and her ex-business partner and subordinate, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, stole about $1bn (£803m) from investors who financed the company while also putting patients’ lives in jeopardy.
After being found guilty on 12 charges of fraud and conspiracy, Balwani, 57, was given a prison sentence of nearly 13 years.
On Wednesday, a San Francisco judge sided with Holmes’ attorneys and upheld the lower court’s decision to refuse her freedom pending an appeal of her original fraud conviction.
Judge Edward Davila denied her request for temporary release earlier this month and ordered her to go to a minimum-security prison in the Houston area on Thursday pending additional appeals.
Although the jury acquitted Holmes of all charges, his attorneys filed an appeal late Tuesday saying the original decision contained “numerous, inexplicable errors,” such as references to “patient fraud convictions,” according to Sky’s US partner, NBC News.
Among “the most substantial white collar offenses Silicon Valley or any other district has seen,” Holmes was sentenced in November.
She became the youngest self-made female billionaire
In 2014, she became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the United States, but her $9 billion (£7.3 billion) company collapsed after its technology was revealed to be fake.
According to NBC News, the deadline for prosecutors to answer Holmes’s latest request has been set for May 3.
After dropping out of Stanford to start Theranos, inspired by the success of Silicon Valley titans like Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Holmes’s tenure in office will begin about 20 years later.
After breaking up with Balwani, she met her current boyfriend, William “Billy” Evans, who fathered her two children.
Documentaries, podcasts, and the Emmy-winning TV drama The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried as Holmes, have all been inspired by her meteoric rise and fall from history-making billionaire to the edge of jail.
