Elizabeth Holmes enters prison and closes one of the most famous fraud scandals in the US

Elizabeth Holmes, right, arriving at Bryan Minimum Security Prison.Michael Wyke (AP)

Elizabeth Holmes swells the prison population of the United States since Tuesday. Once praised by Silicon Valley for her vision, the businesswoman has turned herself in this afternoon to begin paying her sentence for fraud in Bryan, a minimum security prison in Texas. Edward Davila, the judge in the Theranos case, recommended this women's center for Holmes, a mother of two children and married to the heir to a small San Diego hotel group.

In November, Holmes was sentenced to 135 months (11 years and three months) for misleading Theranos shareholders, including General James Mattis, who was Donald Trump's defense secretary, tycoon Rupert Murdoch and George Schultz, former secretary of state. Many of these injected resources into the company that promised hundreds of analyzes with a single drop of blood thanks to a state-of-the-art machine.

Holmes, 39, arrived at the prison smiling, dressed in jeans, a beige jumper and glasses. She was not handcuffed as she was escorted to the center's main building. The image contrasted with the presence he projected during the fifteen weeks that his trial lasted in a California court. Bryan's prison is 160 kilometers northwest of Houston, an area Holmes knows because he grew up there with his brother. Her father was an executive at Enron, the energy giant who fell out of favor as was Elizabeth, who founded Theranos just 19 years after dropping out of college.

Judge Davila chose this detention center for its visitation facilities. The prison is located in a residential area and has a population of 720 women who are not considered dangerous or violent. Many have been convicted of fraud, scams and white-collar crimes. Others serve sentences related to non-serious crimes of human or drug trafficking. Up to four can live in one cell, which has two bunk beds, a table and a wardrobe. For the time being, Holmes will share a roof with a woman sentenced to 13 years for having lent her house to sell methamphetamines.

Aerial view of the prison in Bryan, Texas, where Elizabeth Holmes will serve her sentence for fraud. GO NAKAMURA (REUTERS)

Holmes can be visited by her family on weekends and holidays. The center has a playground. Unlike medium and maximum security prisons, physical contact is allowed. This means that Holmes will be able to breastfeed her baby, Invicta, born in February, and hold William, born in July 2021, on her lap. They will be able to live with their mother in this special area until they are 10 years old.

According to federal law, inmates must serve at least 85% of their sentence. Judicial authorities have not ruled out in this case that Holmes' could be reduced for good behavior and for the employment program, which requires all incarcerated women to have a job for at least 90 days. Holmes also received three years of probation, which will count once she is released.

Silicon Valley's promise had tried to delay his imprisonment by arguing that he was awaiting an appeal. It was part of his strategy to seek a new trial, something Judge Davila deemed unlikely. Sunny Balwani, who was the right-hand man at Theranos and who had a relationship with Holmes when the two were executives, was found guilty of 12 counts in a parallel proceeding. In April, he entered prison to begin the 13 years ahead of him for defrauding shareholders and patients.

Elizabeth Holmes broke a media silence of almost seven years in early May. In what was her first interview with a media, she wanted to change the image she built for years, that of the ambitious businesswoman willing to do anything. For years she earned the reputation of one of Silicon Valley's most important women by dressing up as Steve Jobs and talking about her vision of health with a grave bell.

"I don't think I ever lost sight of my mission, but I did lose my narrative... History snowballed into this snowball that didn't allow us to get back to the point we wanted to talk about," he told The New York Times. Weeks before turning herself in to authorities, Holmes allowed a reporter from the newspaper to visit her at her home in San Diego, which included a visit to the zoo, to get a closer look at her life as a mother and convict. His intention was to give human depth to who has been the living portrait of deception and corporate ambition.

Prosecutors asked for 15 years in prison for Holmes and $450 million in damages. The conviction achieved was for having defrauded those who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into the business, which came to be valued at 9,000 million dollars. "Of course it was fraud," Rupert Murdoch wrote in an email to reporters from The Wall Street Journal, which he owns. I can only blame myself for not asking more questions. I was one of many old men who believed in what seemed to be a great young woman! It was shameful," admitted the tycoon, who invested 125 million dollars in the fiasco.

Unlike Balwani, who was in charge of the labs, Holmes was unpunished for affecting hundreds of patients, who received incorrect diagnoses. At the sentencing hearing, Judge Davila called Elizabeth Holmes brilliant and said he did not think her goal was to enrich herself by any means. As of Tuesday, Bryan's prison already has its most famous prisoner. The woman who fooled Silicon Valley and Wall Street until her empire collapsed.

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