Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes bought a one-way ticket to Mexico and had ‘attempted to flee the country’ shortly after her conviction last year, federal prosecutors have said.
In January last year, Holmes, 38, was found guilty on four counts of fraud and conspiracy at the failed tech-startup, which falsely claimed it could run multiple blood tests on a single drop of blood.
And in November, she was sentenced to 135 months behind bars - with the judge saying she must surrender to the court on April 27.
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Her legal team has since launched an appeal of the conviction and sentence and have asked the judge to allow Holmes to remain out on bail until the appeals have concluded.
However, prosecutors have claimed Holmes is a flight-risk and in a new filing said that just weeks after her conviction the government discovered she had a flight to Mexico booked on January 26, 2022, without any return flight booked.
In the filing prosecutors wrote: “The incentive to flee has never been higher and [Holmes] has the means to act on that incentive.”
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After discovering the reservation, prosecutors contacted Holmes’ legal team said the flight had been booked before the verdict.
An email from Holmes’s defense attorney Lance Wade that was submitted as evidence, read: “The hope was that the verdict would be different and Ms. Holmes would be able to make this trip to attend the wedding of close friends in Mexico.
“Given the verdict, she does not plan to take the trip — and therefore did not provide notice, seek permission, or request access to her passport (which the government has) for the trip.”
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Prosecutors said that it was ‘impossible to know’ what Holmes would have done if the flight hadn’t been discovered.
They wrote: “The government anticipates [Holmes] will note in reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled—but it is difficult to know with certainty what [Holmes] would have done had the government not intervened.”
Holmes, who is heavily pregnant, was once dubbed the youngest ever female self-made billionaire by Forbes when she was just 30-year-old, and had a stake in Theranos worth $4.5bn (£3.8bn).
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Theranos was once valued at more than $9bn (£7.5bn) and pulled several high-profile investors.
However, the startup eventually imploded following an investigation from the Wall Street Journal, which questioned inconsistencies and problems with its technology.
The company, which Holmes founded when she was just 19, officially dissolved in 2018 and shortly after she was charged with 11 counts of fraud alongside her former co-executive and ex-boyfriend Sunny Balwani, were both charged with 12 counts of fraud.
Claire Reid