The attorney for former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes asked to postpone the trial date until April 2021, citing concerns about the coronavirus. Melissa Francis from FOX Business with more.
The trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes for alleged fraud will be delayed several weeks after prosecuting and defense lawyers revealed in court documents that she is pregnant, according to several reports on Friday.
Holmes’s trial on several counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud was scheduled to begin on July 13. In a lawsuit, lawyers on both sides asked a United States District Court judge in San Jose to postpone the start because Holmes is pregnant “with a due date of July 2021,” Bay Area News Group reported.
Defense lawyers and federal prosecutors asked the judge to reschedule the jury selection for August 31. The trial has already been postponed several times due to complications related to the coronavirus pandemic.
ELIZABETH HOLMES, FOUNDER OF THERANOS, DOUBTS EFFORTS TO MAINTAIN ‘WEALTH, EXPENSES AND LIFESTYLE’ IN CASE OF FRAUD
Holmes is married to the heir to the Billy Evans hotel, Vanity Fair reported in 2019.
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of Theranos, arrives for a motion hearing on Monday, November 4, 2019, at the United States District Court inside the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building in San Jose, California. (Photo by Yichuan Cao / NurPhoto via Getty (Getty Images)
Theranos once reached a $ 9 billion valuation, promoting a medical device that was supposed to be able to perform a series of vital medical tests with just a few drops of a patient’s blood. In 2015, Forbes noted that Holmes was the youngest billionaire woman in the world.
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But the company collapsed after a series of reports from the Wall Street Journal that Theranos’ machines could not perform the functions that Holmes claimed. Prosecutors accused Holmes and Theranos’ former chief operating officer, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, of defrauding investors and the public.
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Holmes faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $ 2.75 million fine if convicted of fraud, according to the Justice Department. Both defendants denied wrongdoing.