Elizabeth Holmes, The Former Theranos CEO: Tried To Flee U.S. After Conviction, Prosecutors Allege

Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, is in the news again after a U.S. court filing revealed she had booked a one-way plane ticket to Mexico just weeks after being convicted of fraud in January 2022. According to prosecutors, the booking was an attempt to flee the country.

The filing on Thursday opposes Holmes’ motion for release pending appeal. In November 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison after being convicted in January on four counts of defrauding investors.

Prosecutors made the allegations in a court filing on Friday, accusing the Theranos founder of buying a one-way ticket to Mexico after she was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The flight was set to take off three weeks after she was convicted.

The court filing said that the government became aware on January 23, 2022, that Holmes had booked a flight to Mexico departing on January 26, 2022, without a scheduled return trip. The government then informed Holmes’ legal team of the unauthorized flight, which was subsequently canceled.

Holmes’ partner Billy Evans had flown out on Jan 26, 2022, and didn’t return for 6 weeks. The filing states that “the government anticipates Defendant will note in reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled – but it is difficult to know with certainty what Defendant would have done had the government not intervened.”

The filing by prosecutors also noted that another judge had analyzed several factors that are also present in Holmes’ case and found the defendant failed to meet his burden of proving she was not a flight risk.

The filing goes on to say that “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. And under that system, the time has come for Elizabeth Holmes to answer for her crimes committed nearly a decade ago, as found by a jury made up of a fair cross-section of individuals from this community, and to begin serving the term of imprisonment imposed by this Court as sufficient but not greater than necessary to account for those crimes.”

Holmes, who is pregnant, was ordered to surrender to custody on April 27, 2023.

Elizabeth Holmes & Theranos

Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, was a Silicon Valley success story gone wrong. In 2003, Holmes founded and was the chief executive officer (CEO) of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company. The company soon soared in valuation and became a start-up darling worth $9 billion. However, it all came crashing down when a jury found Holmes guilty of four charges in a criminal fraud trial that began in September 2020.

Holmes had won the trust of corporations like Walgreens, world leaders like Henry Kissinger and former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and the media — she appeared on magazine covers from Forbes to Fortune. Despite her impressive credentials, Holmes was accused of duping investors and lying about Theranos’ technology capabilities.

At the time, Holmes marketed Theranos as a revolutionary technology that could accurately run hundreds of tests on a few drops of blood. However, the technology was never fully realized, and Holmes and her company eventually became embroiled in scandal.

Holmes and her former COO, Ramesh Balwani, were charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The jury ultimately found her guilty on four counts. She faces a potential prison sentence of up to 20 years and fines of up to $250,000 for each count.

It’s unclear what the future holds for Holmes, but the case has become a cautionary tale of hubris and hype in Silicon Valley. Many still wonder how someone could have pulled off such a massive deception and why so many smart people bought it. The answer lies in the psychology of deception. According to behavioral experts, Holmes may not be so different from the rest of us — believing her own lies, falling victim to confirmation bias, and getting caught up in stories that are too good to be true.