Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced entrepreneur who was convicted of defrauding investors at her failed blood-testing start-up Theranos, reported to a federal prison in Texas on Tuesday to begin her 11-year, three-month sentence.
Holmes surrendered to FPC Bryan, a minimum-security prison camp for women located 90 minutes from Houston. She pulled up in a Ford Expedition wearing jeans, glasses and a sweater, and got out carrying some papers.
FPC Bryan’s 655 inmates are required to work in the cafeteria or in a manufacturing facility, where pay starts at $1.15 an hour. Before starting work at the factory, Holmes may take a test to assess her strengths in areas such as business, clerical, numerical, logic, mechanical and “social.” Inmates can also enrol in a “Lean Six Sigma” training programme to learn about efficiency.
“We try to help our ladies obtain work in the factory which focuses on their strengths so they may develop additional marketable skills,” the prison’s handbook says.
Holmes, 39, was found guilty last year of four counts of wire fraud and conspiracy for falsely claiming that Theranos’s blood tests could detect a variety of ailments with just a few drops of blood.
New York Times News Service
