As Elizabeth Holmes prepares to report to prison, her 11-year sentence for the blood-testing scam at the heart of her Theranos startup represents a comeuppance for the woman who broke through “tech bro” culture to become one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, only to be exposed as a fraud, reports the Associated Press. Holmes became a symbol of the shameless hyperbole that saturates startup culture. Questions linger about her true intentions; even the federal judge who presided over her trial seemed mystified. Holmes’ defenders ask whether the punishment fits the crime. At 39, she seems most likely to be remembered as a high-flying entrepreneur burning with reckless ambition whose odyssey culminated in convictions for fraud and conspiracy.
Some supporters say federal prosecutors targeted her unfairly in their zeal to bring down one of the most prominent practitioners of fake-it-til-you-make-it — the tech sector’s brand that sometimes veers into exaggeration and blatant lies to raise money. On Tuesday, she is scheduled begin the sentence that will separate her from her two children — a son whose July 2021 birth delayed the start of her trial and a 3-month-old daughter conceived after her conviction. She is expected to be incarcerated in Bryan, Tex., 100 miles northwest of her hometown of Houston. The prison was recommended by the judge who sentenced Holmes. The minimum-security women’s prison camp can hold about 720 inmates, and most have been convicted of white-collar crimes, low-level drug offenses and harboring illegal immigrants, reports the Wall Street Journal.