Elizabeth Holmes, Silicon Valley’s most famous convict, makes her long-shot appeal

Lawyers for Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted Silicon Valley grifter, are set to argue her appeal before a California court Tuesday, revisiting a case that exposed the shortcomings of the tech world’s fake-it-till-you-make-it startup culture.

Lawyers for Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted Silicon Valley grifter, are set to argue her appeal before a California court Tuesday, revisiting a case that exposed the shortcomings of the tech world’s fake-it-till-you-make-it startup culture. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing company, Theranos. She is seeking a new trial, arguing that the judge in her case erred in several decisions during the 2022 proceedings. Holmes is serving her sentence at a minimum-security facility in southern Texas and, as with most defendants, is not expected to appear in court when California’s Ninth Circuit hears her appeal. Since her conviction, her projected release date from prison has been moved up, shaving about two years off her sentence. Over the past decade, the story of Theranos — valued at $10 billion at its peak — has become a cautionary tale of tech-startup hubris and hype. It had all the hallmarks of a Silicon Valley juggernaut: A 19-year-old founder who dropped out of Stanford and dressed like Steve Jobs, an audacious mission to disrupt the medical establishment and lots of buzz among deep-pocketed investors such as Larry Ellison and Rupert Murdoch. The pitch was simple: Just one drop of blood, spun through Theranos’ proprietary machine, could deliver faster, more accurate results than traditional testing that required whole vials drawn from a patient’s veins.