Elizabeth Holmes may find herself welcoming her second child while serving time behind bars. The Theranos founder, who was sentenced to a 11-year prison sentence for fraud charges on Friday, Nov. 18, is pregnant, according to court documents obtained by The New York Times. After being convicted in January for defrauding investors with her blood-testing startup, Holmes became pregnant, per the outlet.
In July 2021, before her criminal trial began, Holmes welcomed her first child, a baby named William Holmes Evans, with her partner Billy Evans, according to ABC News. The pregnancy was only made public after her legal team requested her trial date be moved in order to accommodate the impending birth. The date had already been rescheduled three times due to the pandemic.
While carrying her second baby, Holmes was also fined $250,000 and ordered to pay restitution on each of her four charges of defrauding investors during her Friday sentencing. The Stanford University dropout, who founded Theranos in 2003 and grew it into a $9 million company, will also serve 3 years under supervision following her release.
The end for Theranos began in October 2015 after Wall Street Journal reports cast doubt on the company’s claims that their new technology could test blood more efficiently than standard practices. In reality, the company was relying on other companies’ traditional lab testing machines and typical blood draws to run many of its tests. A Securities and Exchange Commission investigation followed and led to several federal fraud charges against Holmes and her former boyfriend, Theranos president and CEO Sunny Balwani, in June 2018. Balwani was convicted on 12 counts in a separate trial and is scheduled to be sentenced in December.
Amidst all of the controversy surrounding Theranos, including an indictment in 2018, Elizabeth got engaged and married to Evans Hotels heir William “Billy” Evans in 2019. The pair had met at a party in Silicon Valley in 2017, according to The New York Post.