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Theranos was founded in 2003 with the stated goal of running blood tests from small fingerstick samples. Elizabeth Holmes was later convicted of defrauding investors—not patients—after prosecutors argued that the company’s claims about its testing technology and business were misleading. The jury’s January 2022 verdict was mixed: it found Holmes guilty on four investor-related counts, acquitted her on four patient-related counts, and did not reach verdicts on three other investor counts. She was sentenced to 135 months in prison in November 2022, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decisions in February 2025.
How did Theranos begin?
Theranos began in 2003, when Elizabeth Holmes left college during her second year and founded the company. Its early ambition was to make blood testing possible using a small sample collected from a fingerstick, rather than relying on the larger blood draws commonly associated with laboratory testing. The goal was not just a different collection method: the company presented its analyzer as a way to run a broad range of clinical tests quickly from very small samples.
The founding year and the company’s stated aim are described in the SEC’s 2018 civil complaint and the Ninth Circuit’s later opinion. The SEC complaint is a civil enforcement filing that set out allegations; it should not be treated as a criminal verdict or as proof that a jury accepted every allegation in it.
The distinction between the promise and the evidence became central to the criminal case. According to the Justice Department’s summaries of trial evidence, Theranos represented that its proprietary analyzer could perform many kinds of clinical tests on fingerstick samples, with results that were faster and more accurate than conventional methods. Prosecutors presented evidence that the technology had accuracy and reliability problems, could perform only a limited range of tests, and that conventional third-party analyzers did much of the company’s testing. Those are descriptions of evidence presented at trial, not findings that the company’s system was independently assessed in this article.
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What happened to Theranos in 2018?
In March 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil complaint against Holmes and Theranos. The complaint alleged securities fraud and described claims made to investors about the company’s technology, business, and financial prospects. A civil complaint states the regulator’s allegations; it is separate from the criminal prosecution that followed and does not itself establish criminal guilt.
On June 14, 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’s former president and chief operating officer. The indictment began the criminal case. The Justice Department’s case page records the criminal proceedings, while the SEC filing belongs to the separate civil enforcement action.
The SEC case and the federal criminal case should not be collapsed into one proceeding. They involved different legal processes, and the criminal jury eventually decided specific counts against Holmes. The civil complaint helps explain the allegations made by the regulator; the criminal verdict determines what the jury found beyond a reasonable doubt on the charges it considered.
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What did prosecutors say Theranos had promised?
Prosecutors’ case focused on claims that Theranos had developed a proprietary testing system able to run a wide range of tests using tiny fingerstick samples, and that the results were fast and accurate. In the government’s account, those claims helped attract investment even as the company faced technological limitations and relied substantially on conventional analyzers for testing.
The contrast is important: a company can have a genuine goal or a promising idea, while specific statements about its capabilities, performance, or business still become the subject of a fraud case. Here, trial evidence as summarized by DOJ addressed whether claims to investors were misleading in light of the technology’s limitations and the use of conventional machines. The jury’s eventual guilty verdict applied to investor-related counts, not to every accusation or every claim made about Theranos.
DOJ reported that wire transfers associated with the four counts of conviction totaled more than $140 million. That figure describes transfers associated with those counts, as stated by the government; it is not the amount of Holmes’s prison sentence or a complete measure of every financial loss alleged in the broader Theranos story.
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When was Elizabeth Holmes convicted, and what was the verdict?
A federal jury returned its verdict on January 3, 2022. It convicted Holmes of one conspiracy count and three wire-fraud counts relating to investors. It acquitted her of one conspiracy count and three wire-fraud counts relating to patients. The jury did not reach unanimous verdicts on three additional investor-related counts, and another patient-related count was dismissed during trial, according to DOJ.
| Part of the case | Jury or court outcome |
|---|---|
| Investor-fraud conspiracy | Guilty |
| Three investor wire-fraud counts | Guilty |
| Three additional investor-related counts | No unanimous verdict |
| Patient-fraud conspiracy | Acquitted |
| Three patient wire-fraud counts | Acquitted |
| Another patient-related count | Dismissed during trial |
This count-by-count result is why it is inaccurate to say that Holmes was convicted of defrauding patients. The jury found her guilty of the investor-related conspiracy and wire-fraud counts, and it acquitted her on the specified patient-related counts. A lack of unanimous verdict on other investor counts is not the same as a conviction or acquittal on those counts.
The Justice Department’s verdict announcement summarized the outcome and the prosecution’s account of the trial evidence. It quoted FBI San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Craig Fair saying, “Elizabeth Holmes chose fraud over business failure. A jury has determined, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she intentionally misled investors.” That statement is Fair’s characterization of the verdict in the DOJ release; the jury’s actual findings are the specific counts listed above.
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What sentence did Holmes receive?
On November 18, 2022, U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila sentenced Holmes to 135 months in federal prison—11 years and three months—and three years of supervision following her release. DOJ said she was ordered to surrender on April 27, 2023. The sentence was imposed after the investor-fraud convictions; it was not a sentence for the patient-related counts on which the jury acquitted her.
The DOJ sentencing release describes the sentence and the prosecution’s view of the evidence. It also quotes FDA Assistant Commissioner for Criminal Investigations Catherine A. Hermsen: “Today’s announcement should serve as a reminder that fraud related to medical products will not be tolerated.” The quote reflects Hermsen’s statement in the context of the sentencing announcement, rather than an additional jury finding.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Prison terms are only one part of a criminal judgment. A later administrative decision from the Department of Health and Human Services recounts that the district court ordered Holmes and Balwani jointly and severally liable for $452,047,268 in restitution to specified investor victims. The shared-liability wording means the judgment assigns the obligation to both defendants; the amount is a restitution judgment, not the value of Holmes’s sentence and not a description of the jury’s count-by-count verdict. See the HHS Departmental Appeals Board decision for that later procedural account.
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What happened in Holmes’s 2025 appeal?
On February 24, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decisions after considering Holmes’s appeal. The appellate outcome left the district court’s decisions in place; it did not replace the 2022 jury’s mixed verdict with a new verdict.
The primary source is the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in United States v. Holmes. The opinion also recounts the company’s founding goal and the technology limitations described in the criminal proceedings. The key timeline distinction is that conviction came from the jury in 2022, the sentence followed later that year, and the appellate court ruled in 2025.
Theranos timeline at a glance
- 2003: Holmes founded Theranos after leaving college during her second year; the company’s stated aim was small-sample testing from a fingerstick.
- March 2018: The SEC filed a civil complaint alleging securities fraud.
- June 14, 2018: A federal grand jury indicted Holmes and Balwani.
- January 3, 2022: The jury convicted Holmes on four investor-related counts, acquitted her on four patient-related counts, and did not reach verdicts on three investor counts; another patient count had been dismissed.
- November 18, 2022: Holmes received a 135-month prison sentence and three years of supervision after release.
- February 24, 2025: The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decisions.
The central lesson of the timeline is not simply that Theranos’s technology fell short of its public promise. The legal result was narrower and more specific: the jury found Holmes guilty of investor fraud on four counts, while acquitting her on the patient-fraud counts it decided. Her sentence followed those convictions, and the Ninth Circuit later affirmed the district court’s decisions.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why was Holmes acquitted on the patient-related counts?
The jury acquitted Holmes of the patient-fraud conspiracy count and three patient wire-fraud counts. The sources summarized here establish that outcome but do not give a complete explanation of the jury’s deliberations, so an acquittal should not be recast as a finding that every patient-facing claim was accurate.
Was Sunny Balwani convicted in the same case?
Balwani was indicted alongside Holmes on June 14, 2018, but the verdict and sentence described in this timeline are Holmes’s. The cited Holmes verdict and sentencing summaries do not provide Balwani’s count-by-count outcome or sentence.
What does it mean that the jury did not reach a verdict on three counts?
It means jurors did not reach the required unanimous decision on those investor-related counts. Those counts were neither guilty verdicts nor acquittals in the January 2022 result described by DOJ.
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