Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, set to be sentenced Friday, should go to prison for 15 years and pay back investors she defrauded, federal prosecutors argued in a blistering sentencing memo.
Holmes, pregnant and the mother of a young son, last week asked in her own sentencing memo for a maximum of 18 months — or no prison time at all. She was convicted in January on four felony counts of bilking investors in her now-defunct Palo Alto blood-testing startup out of more than $144 million. Legal experts expect she will receive a multi-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors said in their memo that Holmes “repeatedly chose lies, hype, and the prospect of billions of dollars over patient safety and fair dealing with investors,” and called her crimes “extraordinarily serious, among the most substantial white collar offenses Silicon Valley or any other district has seen.”
