Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Tried To Flee Country Following Conviction For Fraud

Elizabeth Holmes attempted to flee the country after her conviction for cheating investors out of millions with her biotech company Theranos, according to court documents that surfaced this Thursday.

The former entrepreneur, who at her peak had a net worth of approximately $4.5 billion, was found guilty of multiple counts of wire fraud on January 3, and sentenced to 11 years in prison in November 2022.

IN MEMORIAM 2022: 100 GREAT CELEBRITIES WHO DIED IN 2022

“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,” the prosecutors had said. “Only after the government raised this unauthorized flight with defense counsel was the trip canceled.”

Holmes’s lawyers wrote in an email obtained by ABC News that Holmes had booked the flight before January 3, 2022, and that she was planning on visiting a close friend for their wedding on the possibility that she would not be convicted.

Though she ultimately canceled the ticket, prosecutors said that it was difficult to ascertain whether she would have done the same if the flight was not brought to her legal team’s attention.

In a Friday Twitter post, after hearing about Holmes’s alleged escape plan, Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, the same person who broke the story in 2015 that Theranos’s technology did not work as they claimed to, wrote: “Clearly the plan was to travel under a fake passport since her real one was confiscated in 2018 as part of the original bail terms.”

But it wasn’t just investors that Holmes roped into her deception – she also tricked patients and doctors with her omission of critical information about the limitations of her company’s technologies and her claims that the star machine of Theranos, The Edison, could produce accurate tests with just a few drops of blood.

Since her conviction, Holmes’s team has appealed the decision, remaining adamant on her innocence in the situation and herself citing murky judgment after alleged abuse from ex-boyfriend and former Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Balwani was sentenced to 13 years in prison for fraud that same November.

In the new filing, however, prosecutors demanded that they wanted Holmes arrested now instead of letting her continue to live on her $13,000 per month estate, due to the flight risk that she presents.

The government alleged that Holmes showed no remorse for victims and that she should not be granted a motion for release pending her appeal, a process that could persist for years. She already has a delayed surrender date, currently April 23, 2023, after announcing her pregnancy with a second child with spouse and hospitality heir William “Billy” Evans.

Evans had left the country for Mexico on the same day that Holmes had scheduled the flight for. His ticket was also a one-way one, and he did not return until March 4, 2022, from Cape Town, South Africa, a statement from prosecutor Kelly Volkar noted.