Elizabeth Holmes made an “attempt to flee the country” after her conviction, prosecutors say | CNN Business

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Elizabeth Holmes made an “attempt to flee the country” by booking a one-way ticket to Mexico in January 2022, shortly after the founder of Theranos was convicted of fraud, prosecutors alleged in a new court filing Friday.

Holmes was convicted last January of defrauding investors while running failed blood-testing startup Theranos. In November she was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison. She has appealed her conviction.

The claim that he tried to leave the country last year emerged as part of a new filing by prosecutors who argued that Holmes should begin serving his sentence in prison instead of living in an estate that had 13,000 dollars a month in maintenance fees while your appeal is pending.

In the filing, prosecutors argue that Holmes has not shown convincing evidence that she is not a flight risk, as her lawyers have claimed, and used the alleged 2022 incident to support their concerns that this risk

“The government learned on January 23, 2022 that defendant Holmes booked an international flight to Mexico departing on January 26, 2022, with no scheduled return trip,” the court filing states. “Only after the government raised this unauthorized flight with defense counsel was the trip canceled.”

The file adds that prosecutors predicts that Holmes “will respond that he did not in fact leave the country as planned,” but said that “it is difficult to know for sure” what he would have done “if the government had not intervened.” Now, after his conviction, prosecutors say “the incentive to flee has never been greater” and Holmes “has the means to act on that incentive.”

An attorney for Holmes did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment on the filing Friday. In an earlier court filing, his lawyers argued for his release pending appeal, saying he was not a flight risk or a threat to the community.

Holmes has been ordered to be arrested on April 27, 2023.

“There are not two systems of justice, one for the rich and one for the poor, there is one criminal justice system in this country,” prosecutors said in the filing. They argue that “under this system, the time has come” for Holmes to answer for his crimes.

Once valued at $9 billion, Theranos attracted major investors and retail partners with claims that it had developed technology to test a wide range of conditions with just a few drops of blood. The company began unraveling after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had performed only about a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy.