In a recent interview from federal prison, disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes made one thing apparent: She’s still not taking responsibility for defrauding countless people with her fake blood-testing devices.
After dropping out of Stanford in 2004, Holmes threw herself into creating Theranos, a Palo Alto company that billed itself as the future of health care. Holmes boasted that her revolutionary blood-testing machines required just a drop of blood, and she partnered with Walgreens to bring the devices to patients nationwide, becoming the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire in the process.
Unbeknownst to investors and patients, the so-called Edison device rarely worked, and most of the testing was done with traditional machines. The house of cards came down in 2015, when Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou published an expose of the company. A few years later, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California charged Holmes with fraud. She was found guilty and sentenced to over 11 years in federal prison.
Holmes, who once lived in a mansion in Atherton, now calls Federal Prison Camp, Bryan home. Last week, she gave People a rare interview from the minimum-security facility located about 100 miles from Houston, Texas.
When pressed about her “mistakes,” People wrote that she still “defiantly maintains her innocence.” "Theranos failed,” Holmes said. “I take responsibility for that failure. Failure is not fraud."
Former co-workers testified that Holmes was well aware that the machines gave inaccurate results but continued to let patients use them. The inaccurate test results caused some people to be prescribed the wrong medication, and others were reportedly led to believe they may have had cancer.
Anyone awaiting Holmes’ mea culpa will be left disappointed. She told People she plans on reforming the criminal justice system when she is released. “She has drafted a bill — a seven-page handwritten document titled the American Freedom Act — which she says would change criminal procedure, with the goal of bolstering the presumption of innocence,” the outlet reported.
Holmes, 41, is expected to be released on April 3, 2032, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The sentence reduction is due to good behavior.