Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, expected to receive a multiyear prison term for felony fraud, has had her sentencing date set for Nov. 18.
Meanwhile, a key prosecution witness at her trial, who showed up at her home in August, has responded to Holmes’ attempt to use that visit as grounds for a new trial and attacked her for purportedly demanding extensive information from him in advance of what is intended to be a limited hearing next week about his attendance at her home.
After a jury convicted Holmes in January on four counts of defrauding investors out of more than $144 million, Holmes’ sentencing has been delayed twice. Originally, she was to be sentenced Sept. 26, then the date was pushed to Oct. 17. On Wednesday, Judge Edward Davila in U.S. District Court in San Jose set the new date, with the hearing to start at 10 a.m. in the courtroom where her four-month trial took place.
Holmes, 38, founded the blood-testing startup in 2003. The company closed in 2018 after a 2015 newspaper exposé led to federal investigations. Holmes in 2018 was banned for 10 years from serving as an officer or director of a public company and agreed to pay a $500,000 fine in a deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The jury acquitted her on charges of defrauding patients.
Legal experts say Holmes, who has a 15-month-old son, is headed for prison, but that Davila may factor the interests of the child into her sentencing.
The disgraced founder has a hearing Oct. 17 on her motion for a new trial based on a visit to her home in August by a key prosecution witness, former Theranos lab director Dr. Adam Rosendorff, whom her defense team has characterized as regretful over his testimony against her. A sworn declaration by Rosendorff filed subsequently in court by prosecutors said he stood by his testimony. Davila emphasized that the hearing, with Rosendorff appearing in court, would be “limited” and he warned a Holmes lawyer it would not be a “fishing expedition.”
On Wednesday, lawyers for Rosendorff said in a court filing that Holmes’ legal team had sent him a subpoena in advance of the hearing. “(Holmes) has sought to transform that limited inquiry into a free-for-all in which Dr. Rosendorff would be required to search through more than a year’s worth of sensitive emails, text messages, and other communications with family, friends, and others so that (Holmes) can try, yet again, to make him look like a liar,” said the filing, which asked Davila to quash the subpoena.
In the filing, Rosendorff’s lawyers also explained why he visited Holmes’ residence. On that day, he went by Theranos’ former headquarters in Palo Alto and the Walgreens drug store in Palo Alto where the startup conducted its first commercial launch, according to the filing.
“The Theranos building had been torn down and a residential development complex built in its place. The Walgreens was gone too, replaced by a rug store,” the filing said. “Dr. Rosendorff wanted to move on too. He suddenly felt that a conversation with (Holmes) was the missing piece. He wanted to be able to forgive her for the pain and suffering her actions have caused in his life. He wanted to be able to express his condolences that her child may grow up without a mother if (she) receives a lengthy prison sentence.”
Rosendorff became “caught up in the moment,” and, “feeling like he had nothing to lose,” he drove to Holmes’ residence “on a well-known private estate in Woodside” and talked to Holmes’ partner Billy Evans, according to the filing. Rosendorff does not recall saying, as Evans said in a memo filed in court, that he felt guilty or that prosecutors in Holmes’ trial “made things sound worse than they were,” the filing claimed. And those alleged statements “do not accurately describe” how he felt the day of his visit or in the present, the filing claimed.
Rosendorff’s visit also prompted Holmes’ co-accused, former Theranos chief operating officer Sunny Balwani, to seek a new trial. Balwani was found guilty in July on 12 counts of defrauding patients and investors, after a trial that featured testimony against him by Rosendorff. In a motion last week, Balwani claimed Rosendorff’s purported statements to Evans “conflict with Dr. Rosendorf’s testimony at Mr. Balwani’s trial.” On Tuesday, Davila denied Balwani’s motion for a new trial, saying, “none of Dr. Rosendorff’s statements to Mr. Evans pertained to Mr. Balwani’s trial.”
