US court upholds Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes's conviction
117 comments
·February 25, 2025dustingetz
> She described federal prison as “hell and torture” and said she was “not the same person I was back then”. “The people I love the most have to walk away as I stand here, a prisoner, and my reality sinks in”
would love to see Holmes as a face of prison reform when she gets out, she has the right skills and connections to really make a difference
rich_sasha
I have no intimate knowledge of US prisons, but she seems to be kept in a minimum security prison: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Camp,_Bryan
Apparently, according to this: https://federalcriminaldefenseattorney.com/prison-life/priso... there are no guards or fences, hardly any violence. There is a gym, various sports facilities and medical care.
I'm not volunteering to swap my life for this, but "hell and torture"..???
chb
The self-pitying words of entitlement coupled with a persecution complex.
graboy
She is a psychopath, she has not changed, the "loving, caring mother" thing is a false persona she has created.
aitchnyu
Yikes, two humans born for purely selfish purposes. Couple of dates: indictment: June 15, 2018; trial: August 31, 2021.
> In early 2019, Holmes became engaged to Evans, a 27-year-old heir to Evans Hotels, a family-owned group of hotels in the San Diego area.[136][135] In mid-2019, Holmes and Evans reportedly married in a private ceremony.[137][138] Holmes and Evans have not directly confirmed whether the two are legally married, and several sources continue to refer to him as her "partner" rather than her husband.[139][140] Holmes gave birth to a son in July 2021.[140] In October 2022, weeks before her sentencing hearing, it was reported she was pregnant with a second child.[141] Holmes was accused of conceiving a second child, according to a court filing from February 2023, as a strategy for delaying the start of her prison term.
callc
Why Holmes? I can’t tell if this is sarcasm. I would rather not see a person known to be psychopathic a lier, and lacking empathy (imagine the mindset to fake medical devices, having a direct impact on the healthcare of individual people) be the forefront of a social progressive movement. Can we not find someone with better qualities?
dustingetz
the thing is, to spearhead prison reform, you need someone who was once a prisoner, and the intersection of that with "compassionate, honest, empathetic" characteristics would not appear to be very large
walls
> the intersection of that with "compassionate, honest, empathetic" characteristics would not appear to be very large
It's also not to be found here. You're applying character traits to a person just because of their gender.
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perihelions
Text of decision,
(.pdf) https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca9.341...
Arguments in video format,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9mP8zxSi6g ("22-10312 USA v. Elizabeth Holmes: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (23.2K subscribers)")
nojvek
I wonder if Elon will go in for defrauding Investors?
How much should TSLA stock tank before Investors get wary?
crossroadsguy
The judge in the middle seems to be having a particularly great day and is quite cheerful. Unlike the rest two (flankies) who have a more serious (if I may say 'grim') dispositions I have come to associate judges with :)
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api
[flagged]
cjrp
She could definitely get on the anti-vax train, given her background
pixelpoet
No, but if you right wing podcast hard enough, you can be 2nd in command at the FBI (no other qualifications necessary).
short_sells_poo
I guess if only she was peddling drinking bleach or antiparasitic drugs as a cure for cancer, she'd have been already made the head of the FDA.
rusk
What she was doing was just as bad if not worse
short_sells_poo
It was probably worse, I'm merely agreeing with the parent poster that the conditional justice that seems to be getting ever more prevalent in the US (and across the world) can play into her cards just fine if she pivots to talking to the right portion of the population.
api
Yeah but it was the wrong vibes. It wasn't riffing on a popular new age or alt-med quack trend like anti-vax or miracle cures THEY don't want you to know about.
yieldcrv
[flagged]
ajdude
There's never been a time where I have not gotten a response from hn@ycombinator.com
It's much more effective than doing what you're doing.
Loughla
If anyone ever referred to me as a number, I would spit at them. What an unbelievably degrading thing to do.
Also what am I looking at here?
bowsamic
> If anyone ever referred to me as a number, I would spit at them. What an unbelievably degrading thing to do.
Let me get this straight. Someone degrades you so your response is to degrade yourself further by spitting like an animal?
ChocolateGod
I don't quite understand the reasoning for putting her in prison.
Yes, she deserves to be punished, but surely house arrest, community service etc makes more sense for a crime of this nature, rather than using tax payer money to house her for 9 years when she isn't a credible threat to society.
BoxFour
I’m not someone who wants prison purely as a punitive measure. I’d much rather the focus be on rehabilitation. But you’re making it sound like Elizabeth Holmes was accused of something relatively "harmless" like insider trading, rather than what she actually did.
A small sample from Wikipedia:
> In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent a letter to Theranos based on a 2015 inspection of its Newark, California lab, reporting that the facility caused "immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety" due to a test to determine the correct dose of the blood-thinning drug warfarin
blendergeek
She was not convicted of crimes against patients. She was only convicted of crimes against investors.
BoxFour
I’m aware, and Al Capone was busted for taxes. I’m still content with his conviction and punishment.
Out_of_Characte
She could not have been charged with crimes against investors if the patient's blood work results were correct. She knowingly lied about the capability of these devices knowing it would garner investors. That's the crime she got convicted of, luckely no one appears to have died from the invalid medical testing.
duxup
House arrest would make the math on “should I try fraud”lean heavily towards fraud I think.
Maybe even more so if you’ve got a nice house.
westurner
Fraud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud
US Sentencing Commission > Fraud: https://www.ussc.gov/topic/fraud
What would deter fraud?
"Here’s a look inside Donald Trump’s $355 million civil fraud verdict" (2024) https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-letitia-james-new-yor...
"Trump hush money verdict: Guilty of all 34 counts" .. "Guilty: Trump becomes first former US president convicted of felony crimes" (2024) https://apnews.com/article/trump-trial-deliberations-jury-te...
"Trump mistakes [EJC] for [ex-wife]. #Shorts" https://youtube.com/shorts/0tq3rh6bh_8 .. https://youtu.be/lonTBp9h7Fo?si=77DIJMrpBRgLcsMK
duxup
I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean regarding the topic.
Suppafly
This, I barely leave the house anyway.
mpalmer
Prison isn't just punishment, it's a deterrent to future criminals. If white collar criminals got to chill at home for few years, do you think we would have end up with more victims of fraud, or fewer?
anilakar
It's a really terrible deterrent because people are not rational actors.
That said, I'm all for jailing her as long as non-white-collar criminals are getting the same treatment.
Edit: This seems to be a controversial opinion as this comment's score is continuously going up and down.
throwway120385
It's not an effective deterrent because people who commit crimes don't often stop and think "oh if I do this I will get caught." In fact if you've ever reported crimes to police as a victim you've probably had the experience that there's really not much that they do other than take a police report and if it's a crime against property basically tell you to call your insurance company. Prison is a deterrent to you or me because we think things through before we act. But criminals often have really bad impulse control relative to the general population and so any preventative measures that rely on impulse control won't work on them.
acdha
There is more than one type of criminal in the world. What you’re describing is more true of the guys spontaneously grabbing purses or backpacks, not white collar criminals who spend years planning and maintaining their crimes. They’re far more likely to weigh the risk of serious enforcement, and jail is far more of a deterrent for them.
amazingamazing
There are other ways to punish people other than putting them in prison.
makoto12
If threat to society is the only purpose to put someone behind bars, then a large swathe of the incarcerated population wouldn't be behind bars. You could make the same argument for Bernie Madoff, who probably isn't a danger to society considering his fraud is out in the open.
Jgrubb
..And that he passed away in 2021.
MissTake
> You could make the same argument for Bernie Madoff, who probably isn't a danger to society considering his fraud is out in the open.
Pretty sure Madoff isn’t currently a danger to society because he’s been dead for almost 4 years now.
bitshiftfaced
Pretty superficial way to not address GP's underlying point, which makes sense whether or not Madoff died.
Spooky23
She made alot of powerful people look foolish.
The nature of how the people around her exploited her also makes her a great candidate for being made an example. She has no friends to explain away her crimes, which were significant — this isn’t a Martha Stewart scenario.
DanielHB
Should bankers who caused the 2008 financial crisis also be on home arrest? Sometimes it is about punishment not rehabilitation.
Clubber
Joke's on you, bankers didn't serve any jail time for 2008.
Having said that, I agree 9 years seems extensive. We're just accustomed to these long prison terms. I would have thought 2-3 years plus fines, maybe 5.
The US has the largest prison population in the world both by capita and in total numbers. This is an indication that something is horribly wrong.
monadINtop
the joke's on all of us as long as we continue letting them get away
pjc50
Who did things that were illegal at the time?
(very few people should have gone to prison, but Sean Quinn did for Anglo-Irish Bank, and everyone involved in the US robo-signing fiasco should have at least got a conviction and ban from positions of trust)
Mistletoe
We need stronger punishments for our robber barons, not weaker. We are witnessing the society we experience when they are not kept in check and it is the worst humanity has to offer.
belorn
The reasoning for putting her in prison seems to be based on the severity of doing an almost a billion dollar in fraud. That is in the ballpark of some of the worlds largest bank robberies.
There are good reason to question prison sentences for non-violent crime, and asking about the goals society has. If the goal is deterrent, then studies do show that harsher punishment can be effective if the crime is done under partial rational decision based on the risk of getting caught and the punishment if they do. If the goal is rehabilitation, then the results is less clear and may have the opposite effect.
There is a lot of research and studies on this subject. Some compare different countries, like Norway vs US, and other compare states/cities, or the same location but different years with different strategies. To my knowledge there isn't a lot of consensus in what actually works.
Bad Blood is a good book