Court documents filed Thursday revealed that Elizabeth Holmes, the former founder of Theranos, tried to flee the United States in January 2022 after being convicted on several counts of fraud.
Prosecutors alerted Holmes’s legal team three days before a scheduled flight on which the disgraced CEO had bought a ticket that she was attempting “to flee the country” bound for Mexico. Although Holmes’s ultimately canceled the ticket, and had her passport confiscated, prosecutors noted that “it is difficult to know with certainty” whether she would have left but for their alert.
“Only after the government raised this unauthorized flight with defense counsel was the trip canceled,” the court filing reads.
Holmes was convicted in January 2022 and sentenced to over eleven years in prison for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud surrounding her leadership of the blood-analysis biotech firm, Theranos.
At its peak, Theranos was valued at $9 billion, making it one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious tech unicorns. The hype drew notable investors, including former education secretary Betsy DeVos, Rupert Murdoch, and the Walton family. During this time, Holmes’s personal net worth was estimated to be $4.5 billion.
However, the firm’s bold claims about revolutionizing the biotech industry were exposed as fraudulent following a series of investigations by the Wall Street Journal.
Holmes appealed the ruling which postponed the beginning of her sentence, now slated to begin on April 27, 2023. Prosecutors called the delay “generous” given that Holmes would be living on a California estate whose monthly maintenance costs upwards of $13,000.
“There are not two systems of justice—one for the wealthy and one for the poor—there is one criminal justice system in this country.”