Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 11.25 years in prison with 3 years of supervised release

• Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced to 11.25 years in prison with 3 years of supervised release.
• Once dubbed the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, Holmes was found guilty on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January following a four-month trial that captivated Silicon Valley.

More than four years after charges were brought against her for duping investors and patients at blood-testing startup Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes has been sentenced, according to multiple news reports.

On Friday, federal judge Edward Davila handed down a prison sentence of 135 months, or 11.25 years, with 3 years of supervised release for the 38-year-old founder and former CEO of Theranos.

Holmes, who has a one-year-old and is currently pregnant with her second child, will begin her sentence on April 27, 2023.

"I stand before you taking responsibility for Theranos. I loved Theranos, it was my life's work," Holmes said through tears at the hearing. "I am so, so sorry. I gave everything I had to building and trying to save our company."

"I am devastated by my failings," she continued. "Every day for the past few years I have felt deep pain for what people went through because I failed them."

"Looking back, there are so many things I would do differently if I had the chance. I regret my failings with every cell of my body," Holmes added.

At the hearing, the prosecution and defense went back and forth on various factors that could impact Holmes' sentence, including the extent of the Theranos scheme and how much money investors lost in the company.

Davila concluded the loss to investors in share value was $121 million, saying Theranos' stock would have been cheaper by that much if not for Holmes' fraud. Restitution will be determined at a later date, he said.

The sentencing is the latest development in a years-long scandal that has gripped Silicon Valley. At 19, Holmes dropped out of Stanford University to build Theranos, a blood-testing startup touted to be able to test for hundreds of diseases with a single drop of blood. During her meteoric rise to fame, she brought on former federal government officials, US senators, billionaire CEOs, and even an ex-CDC chief as investors and board members.

Holmes graced countless magazine covers and awards lists and was proclaimed a visionary, becoming the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, with a net worth of approximately $4.5 billion. Theranos was hailed as having the power to revolutionize healthcare and had an estimated $9 billion valuation at its peak.

Holmes' empire began to collapse in 2015, when the Wall Street Journal published a damning exposé revealing Theranos machines could only perform a small fraction of the tests advertised and still produced inaccurate results for those, and the company was instead secretly using competitors' machines already on the market.

The Journal's reporting sparked investigations into Theranos from numerous federal agencies, including the FDA and the SEC. In 2018, the Department of Justice announced that a federal grand jury had indicted Holmes with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and she stepped down as CEO.

Holmes' trial began last September. The defense argued that Holmes was in the dark about the company's many issues and attempted to shift the blame to other Theranos employees, especially Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and former right-hand man at Theranos. During the trial, Holmes accused Balwani, who is 20 years her senior, of physical and emotional abuse, allegations his attorneys have denied.

Prosecutors called to the stand former Theranos employees who said they brought up testing issues to no avail, former investors and board members who recalled being won over by claims they now know were false, and patients who testified about receiving inaccurate test results.

After four months, Holmes was ultimately convicted on four of the 11 counts in January. All four counts related to investors' losses in Theranos; the jury deadlocked on three counts relating to other investments, and Holmes was acquitted on all patient-related charges. For each count on which she was convicted, she faced up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a requirement to pay restitution to victims.

Earlier this month, her attorneys asked for a maximum sentence of 18 months, preferably under house arrest, submitting 130 letters from friends and family seeking leniency. Prosecutors, meanwhile, wanted a 15-year prison sentence and $800 million in restitution.

The downfall of the one-time Silicon Valley star has proven to be an indictment of Silicon Valley's pervasive "fake it till you make it" culture and a cautionary tale to investors on the dangers of insufficient due diligence. Theranos raised roughly $945 million in its lifetime.

Balwani was convicted in July on all 12 counts brought against him. He is due to be sentenced on December 7.