Michael Barbella, Managing Editor11.22.23
The black turtlenecks are history (regrets to Issey Miyake), as are the ill-fitting slacks, Kabuki red lipstick, and falsified baritone of her now iconic alter ego.
The banana whey breakfasts, black suit-dresses, and maternity wear are nowhere to be found, either.
Also gone? The bucket hats and mom jeans.
Meet Elizabeth Holmes 3.0, proud Brazos Valley resident and newfound enthusiast of all things khaki. The former founder/CEO of failed blood testing startup Theranos reinvented herself yet again this year, shedding her image as “Liz,” the gentle, somewhat reserved doting mother of two (itself a departure from the cold, calculating con artist persona) for that of inmate No. 24965-111 at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan.
Holmes assumed her new role on May 30, the first day of the 135-month jail term she received late last year for defrauding her company’s investors. The one-time billionaire tried her damnedness to avoid prison, appealing her conviction over alleged trial-related mistakes, misconduct, and jury bias, and requesting to remain free while the appeal unfolded. When that bid failed, Holmes contested her prison sentence start date but deliberately waited until the day before her scheduled surrender (April 27) to file an appeal—a trick she learned from her former lover and Theranos henchman Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who used the legal maneuver to delay the start of his 155-month prison term by five weeks.
Co-conspirators to the very end.
Unsuccessful co-conspirators, at that—the pair’s crafty delay tactic gave them only a few more weeks of freedom upon its rejection by an appeals court: Balwani surrendered on April 20 and Holmes arrived in Bryan after Memorial Day.
Balwani’s attorney, however, is not giving up on his client. “We will continue to fight for him,” Seattle trial lawyer Jeffrey B. Coopersmith told CNN, “because we do not believe he received a fair trial.”
A 13-week trial last year resulted in Balwani’s conviction on 10 counts of federal wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for deceiving patients and Theranos investors about the company’s flawed blood testing technology. Holmes’ separate four-month trial yielded fraud and conspiracy convictions as well as a profusion of regret about past decisions.
“I am devastated by my failings,” she told U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila at her sentencing. “Every day for the past years I have felt deep pain for what people went through because I failed them. I regret my failings with every cell of my body.”
Fortunately, Holmes has a shot at redemption. About two weeks before she reported to prison, Davila ordered her and Balwani to pay $452 million in restitution to victims of their crimes, including $40 million to Walgreens, $14.5 million to Safeway, and $125 million to Rupert Murdoch, a Theranos investor. Naturally, Holmes balked at the order, claiming she cannot afford such expensive penance in her post-prison life, even when broken down into a $250 monthly payment plan (prosecutors’ suggestion). “I have to work the rest of my life to try to pay for it,” she told New York Times reporter Amy Chozick in May.
Maybe she can get a head start with her prison job as a factory line food packer—it pays up to 12 cents an hour.
At that rate, she’ll have enough saved up for her first 11 post-incarceration restitution payments—assuming, of course, she serves her entire prison term.
But that seems highly unlikely. About 40 or so days after starting her Camp Bryan residency, the Federal Bureau of Prisons posted a projected release date for Holmes that is nearly two years earlier than expected. If it’s accurate and remains unchanged, Holmes could be freed on Dec. 29, 2032.
Happy New Year to “Liz.”
Or will it be Elizabeth (again) by then? Not the calm, unemotional, taciturn tech mogul, obviously, but an entirely new character inspired by her imprisonment. Remorseful Lizzie perhaps?
Probably not—that would require compassion.
Regardless of her supposed new identity, the projected release date is most likely the earliest Holmes can expect to be freed, as federal law requires her to serve 85% of her term, even if prison administrators reduce her sentence for good conduct (quite possible, given Holmes’s delicate flower persona she debuted in the Times profile).
Good conduct actually is the probable source of Holmes’s potential earlier release date.
The camp where Liz is spending the next decade or so houses mostly white-collar and non-violent federal female inmates who can earn good conduct time (GCT) to reduce their total incarceration period, according to CNN. A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson told the cable news channel that qualified inmates can earn up to 54 days of GCT for each year of their court-imposed sentence. Prisoners can earn GCT various ways during their stay, including participation in various Camp Bryan programs.
Earning good conduct time also means following basic prison rules like no intimacy with spouses (a brief kiss, embrace, or handshake is allowed only upon arrival and departure) and no internet access (radios, MP3 players, watches are allowed, purchased through the prison’s commissary), Bureau of Prison rules indicate.
Moreover, Holmes is allowed only 300 minutes (five hours) per month to speak to loved ones by phone, and can only receive visitors on weekends. Any music she listens to must be “non-explicit” and her television viewing time is limited to designated hours at the prison staff’s discretion, according to NPR. Her choices for recreational activities are beading, knitting, ceramics, paper art, fimo, crocheting, quilling, and plastic canvas.
Maybe Holmes will emerge from prison as Liz the artist.
“Holmes may never have perfected Theranos’s blood-testing technology but she was always brilliant at branding,” Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi wrote in an opinion piece this past May.
“Before everything fell apart, the press ate her image up. Now that her previous incarnation has failed, it’s fascinating to watch Holmes pivot. One imagines that Holmes hopes her transformation into Liz will improve her image and perhaps shorten her prison sentence. So will it? Will the right people buy her metamorphosis?”
That will depend on whether those people have fallen for it once (or twice) before.
Read more: bit.ly/3ZXC7fZ
Check out more of MPO's 2023 year in review:
MDR’s Maddening Merry-Go-Round
A Clean Start for EtO
Philips Breathes No Easier in Respiratory Recall
Medtech’s Mega-M&A Is MIA
The banana whey breakfasts, black suit-dresses, and maternity wear are nowhere to be found, either.
Also gone? The bucket hats and mom jeans.
Meet Elizabeth Holmes 3.0, proud Brazos Valley resident and newfound enthusiast of all things khaki. The former founder/CEO of failed blood testing startup Theranos reinvented herself yet again this year, shedding her image as “Liz,” the gentle, somewhat reserved doting mother of two (itself a departure from the cold, calculating con artist persona) for that of inmate No. 24965-111 at Federal Prison Camp, Bryan.
Holmes assumed her new role on May 30, the first day of the 135-month jail term she received late last year for defrauding her company’s investors. The one-time billionaire tried her damnedness to avoid prison, appealing her conviction over alleged trial-related mistakes, misconduct, and jury bias, and requesting to remain free while the appeal unfolded. When that bid failed, Holmes contested her prison sentence start date but deliberately waited until the day before her scheduled surrender (April 27) to file an appeal—a trick she learned from her former lover and Theranos henchman Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, who used the legal maneuver to delay the start of his 155-month prison term by five weeks.
Co-conspirators to the very end.
Unsuccessful co-conspirators, at that—the pair’s crafty delay tactic gave them only a few more weeks of freedom upon its rejection by an appeals court: Balwani surrendered on April 20 and Holmes arrived in Bryan after Memorial Day.
Balwani’s attorney, however, is not giving up on his client. “We will continue to fight for him,” Seattle trial lawyer Jeffrey B. Coopersmith told CNN, “because we do not believe he received a fair trial.”
A 13-week trial last year resulted in Balwani’s conviction on 10 counts of federal wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for deceiving patients and Theranos investors about the company’s flawed blood testing technology. Holmes’ separate four-month trial yielded fraud and conspiracy convictions as well as a profusion of regret about past decisions.
“I am devastated by my failings,” she told U.S. District Court Judge Edward J. Davila at her sentencing. “Every day for the past years I have felt deep pain for what people went through because I failed them. I regret my failings with every cell of my body.”
Fortunately, Holmes has a shot at redemption. About two weeks before she reported to prison, Davila ordered her and Balwani to pay $452 million in restitution to victims of their crimes, including $40 million to Walgreens, $14.5 million to Safeway, and $125 million to Rupert Murdoch, a Theranos investor. Naturally, Holmes balked at the order, claiming she cannot afford such expensive penance in her post-prison life, even when broken down into a $250 monthly payment plan (prosecutors’ suggestion). “I have to work the rest of my life to try to pay for it,” she told New York Times reporter Amy Chozick in May.
Maybe she can get a head start with her prison job as a factory line food packer—it pays up to 12 cents an hour.
At that rate, she’ll have enough saved up for her first 11 post-incarceration restitution payments—assuming, of course, she serves her entire prison term.
But that seems highly unlikely. About 40 or so days after starting her Camp Bryan residency, the Federal Bureau of Prisons posted a projected release date for Holmes that is nearly two years earlier than expected. If it’s accurate and remains unchanged, Holmes could be freed on Dec. 29, 2032.
Happy New Year to “Liz.”
Or will it be Elizabeth (again) by then? Not the calm, unemotional, taciturn tech mogul, obviously, but an entirely new character inspired by her imprisonment. Remorseful Lizzie perhaps?
Probably not—that would require compassion.
Regardless of her supposed new identity, the projected release date is most likely the earliest Holmes can expect to be freed, as federal law requires her to serve 85% of her term, even if prison administrators reduce her sentence for good conduct (quite possible, given Holmes’s delicate flower persona she debuted in the Times profile).
Good conduct actually is the probable source of Holmes’s potential earlier release date.
The camp where Liz is spending the next decade or so houses mostly white-collar and non-violent federal female inmates who can earn good conduct time (GCT) to reduce their total incarceration period, according to CNN. A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson told the cable news channel that qualified inmates can earn up to 54 days of GCT for each year of their court-imposed sentence. Prisoners can earn GCT various ways during their stay, including participation in various Camp Bryan programs.
Earning good conduct time also means following basic prison rules like no intimacy with spouses (a brief kiss, embrace, or handshake is allowed only upon arrival and departure) and no internet access (radios, MP3 players, watches are allowed, purchased through the prison’s commissary), Bureau of Prison rules indicate.
Moreover, Holmes is allowed only 300 minutes (five hours) per month to speak to loved ones by phone, and can only receive visitors on weekends. Any music she listens to must be “non-explicit” and her television viewing time is limited to designated hours at the prison staff’s discretion, according to NPR. Her choices for recreational activities are beading, knitting, ceramics, paper art, fimo, crocheting, quilling, and plastic canvas.
Maybe Holmes will emerge from prison as Liz the artist.
“Holmes may never have perfected Theranos’s blood-testing technology but she was always brilliant at branding,” Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi wrote in an opinion piece this past May.
“Before everything fell apart, the press ate her image up. Now that her previous incarnation has failed, it’s fascinating to watch Holmes pivot. One imagines that Holmes hopes her transformation into Liz will improve her image and perhaps shorten her prison sentence. So will it? Will the right people buy her metamorphosis?”
That will depend on whether those people have fallen for it once (or twice) before.
Read more: bit.ly/3ZXC7fZ
Check out more of MPO's 2023 year in review:
MDR’s Maddening Merry-Go-Round
A Clean Start for EtO
Philips Breathes No Easier in Respiratory Recall
Medtech’s Mega-M&A Is MIA