Disgraced Elizabeth Holmes has been jailed for more than 11 years for duping investors in the failed start-up that promised to revolutionise blood testing but instead made her a symbol of Silicon Valley’s culture of audacious self-promotion.
The sentence imposed by US District Judge Edward Davila was shorter than the 15-year penalty requested by federal prosecutors but far tougher than the leniency the Theranos chief executive's legal team sought for the mother of a year-old son with another child on the way.
Holmes, who was chief executive throughout the company’s turbulent 15-year history and was once the world's youngest female billionaire, was convicted in January over the scheme, which revolved around the company’s claims to have developed a medical device that could detect a multitude of diseases and conditions from a few drops of blood. But the technology never worked. Theranos was dashed “by misrepresentations, hubris and just plain lies”, the judge said.
