Elizabeth Holmes tried running away from country After her conviction
Prosecutors claim in a recent court filing that Elizabeth Holmes “attempted to leave the nation” by purchasing a one-way flight to Mexico for January 2022, just after the Theranos founder was convicted of fraud.
Holmes was found guilty of investment fraud in January of this year for her role in leading the doomed blood testing business Theranos. She received a sentence of almost 11 years in jail in the month of November. Despite her conviction, she will not begin serving her prison time until the spring because of her pregnancy and the appeal process.
A new petition by prosecutors includes the allegation that Holmes attempted to escape the nation last year as part of their case for why she should begin serving her jail term immediately rather than tending to an estate that reportedly costs $13,000 per month to maintain.
Prosecutors claim in the complaint that Holmes has not produced compelling proof that she is not a flight risk, contrary to what her attorneys have said, and they use the supposed event from 2022 to back up their fears.
“The government became aware on January 23, 2022, that Defendant Holmes booked an international flight to Mexico departing on January 26, 2022, without a scheduled return trip,” as per court filing . “Only after the government raised this unauthorized flight with defense counsel was the trip canceled.”
Prosecutors stated in the document that they expect Holmes to “reply that she did not in fact leave the country as scheduled” adding that they find it “it is difficult to know with certainty” what she would have done “had the government not intervened.” Prosecutors claim that after her sentencing, “the incentive to flee has never been higher” and that Holmes “has the means to act on that incentive.”
When CNN contacted Holmes’s legal team for comment over the Friday filing, no one responded right away.
An email from one of Holmes’ attorneys to the prosecution claims the flight reservation was made before the verdict, and this email is included in the court file. Holmes’ counsel argues in the email that the former Theranos CEO was hoping for a different result so that she could go to a friend’s wedding in Mexico.
Theranos, which was once worth $9 billion, attracted prominent investors and retail partners with promises that it had created technology to screen for a broad variety of illnesses with just a few drops of blood. An investigation by the Wall Street Journal published in 2015 revealed that out of the hundreds of tests that Theranos claimed to be able to run using its unique technology, the business had only ever done a few of them.