The judge is laying into her/
A zinger from the judge: “What is the pathology of fraud? Is it the inability to accept responsibility?”
Sounds like he isn’t buying into her “apologies”.
Sentenced to 11 years, 3 months.
I was a manufacturing engineer for 30 years and I specialized in, among other things, the development and release to production of leading edge consumer electronics. I am more qualified than most people to have an opinion on what happened. What Holmes and Balwani did is ridiculously out of the norm. I am beyond disgusted.
Erika Cheung is in the pantheon of my heroes.
11+ years is about right. And Sunny needs to get more.
The judge previously said the “guideline calculation” for sentencing was 135-168 months. Does the possibility of appeal enter in to his decision to go with the lowest end of this range? As in, it encourages the defendant to not appeal because they would be risking a longer sentence?
Is Holmes eligible for any sentence reduction other than 15% off for good behavior?*
*assuming she doesn’t lose good time for spilling watercolors during painting class, or taking a dump on the tennis court.
That’s not all! She also has to pay a $400 fine.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/18/tech/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-sentencing/index.html
The sentence also includes a fine of $400, or $100 for each count of fraud.
I think CNN forgot to tack on a ‘million’ there.
Restitution is yet to be determined:
No, remarkably they actually got their facts correct in this case:
Judge Edward Davila imposed a sentence of 11 years and three months in prison, with another three years of supervision after Holmes is released. The sentence also includes a fine of $400, or $100 for each count of fraud. Restitution will be set at a later date. Holmes was ordered to turn herself into custody on April 27, 2023. She is expected to appeal her conviction.
Holmes, who was found guilty in January on four charges of defrauding investors, faced up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count.
The reality is that Holmes actually has nothing; all of her wealth, so to speak, was actually in Theranos. Nobody is squeezing anything from that root vegetable. Given the multitude of lives she has affected—not just investors but employees who presumably signed on in genuine expectation that Theranos was an actually up-and-up venture, and whose credibility is now shot by association even if they did their best work in support of the company—eleven years of incarceration is a pittance.
Stranger
I’ll bet she could auction off some of those turtlenecks for $400, though.
Is that different than the $400M from this article?
I think it’s actually $400. A fine is not restitution, and the restitution part comes later. The fine appears to be capped at $250k per incident.
Most sites don’t appear to be giving the fine at all, hinting that it’s likely negligible. Perhaps the Yahoo author misunderstood.
The official sentencing docket doesn’t appear to be online yet, but I expect it to show up here:
The ‘special assessment’ language reads strange to me. That doesn’t ping as a fine or as restitution.
I can see her immediate deputies being tarnished with her brush. There is a level at which, even if you were privy to no evil secrets, you had to know major league BS and bad faith dealing was afoot.
OTOH, there were / are dozens or hundreds of people a couple or few levels down the food chain who were doing whatever they did with whatever skill and verve they had. They effectively played no part in the crime and had no hand in the evil, nor knowledge of it. Why would / should their reputations be tarnished any more than that of the investors or the duped customers should be?
It doesn’t matter if they “should be”; if you have the name “Theranos” on your resume as an employer, you will be damaged goods by association regardless of your specific contributions to their dissimulation.
Stranger
OK. Finally got around to looking it up. Special assessments are statutory and only apply to federal convictions. And it really is only $100 per felony.
My understanding is that people convicted of Federal crimes don’t get sentences reduced in the same way as people convicted of crimes in state courts. From here.
Thanks for doing the legwork. I can see that the Yahoo article was updated at some point as well (disappointingly, without any apparent indication that something was changed). Eh, what’s 6 orders of magnitude between friends?
What I don’t understand is how she’s allowed to roam free until April, when she has to turn herself in to begin her sentence. Is it because she’s pregnant? I would think that anyone facing 11 years of incarceration and ruinous restitution would be a serious flight risk.