How Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Depleted Her Billion-Dollar Fortune

Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has watched her net worth take hit after hit. Once worth $4.5 billion, Holmes lost both her company and the bulk of her fortune after she and others associated with her, were accused of committing wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and misleading patients and investors.

Much of Holmes' money was used to support her lifestyle and cover legal fees. So, is Elizabeth Holmes still rich?

“There have been famously wealthy people who have been convicted of crimes and who have managed to serve their sentence, pay their fines, and still move forward with a fair amount of wealth,” Stanford Law School professor David Sklansky told the Bay Area News Group last year. “It’s hard to generalize about how ruinous a legal case winds up being for a particular defendant. There’s no rule in the legal system that if you start off rich, you should be able to be rich when you leave your case.”

What happened to Elizabeth Holmes’ fortune?

Holmes’ current net worth is unclear, but Forbes adjusted its estimate of her fortune from $4.5 billion to "nothing" in 2016, the year after she topped the magazine’s ranking of America’s richest self-made women. As of March 2023, it appears Holmes still has $0 to her name.

Holmes owned half of Theranos stock at the time, but Forbes concluded that the blood-testing company’s performance didn't live up to its $9 billion valuation.

According to the Bay Area News Group, the SEC said Holmes never sold any of her Theranos stock. And though the SEC said she received a salary of $200,000–$390,000 per year between 2013 and 2015, Holmes also had to pay $500,000 as the result of a 2018 settlement with the commission. In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Holmes owed about $25 million to Theranos.

According to the Bay Area News Group, it’s unclear what money and assets Holmes has these days. Sklansky told the newspaper that federal investigators are likely trying to answer that question.

In previously filed court documents, Holmes’ attorneys contended that the former Theranos CEO only got “modest” benefits from the company.

“She took a lower salary even than the salaries of other Theranos executives,” they added, according to Fox Business. “And, although she owned a substantial amount of Theranos equity, she never sold any equity in the company — despite opportunities to do so and contrary to what one would expect if she intended to benefit from a massive fraud.”

But the same documents mentioned the U.S. government’s arguments to the contrary. “According to the government, these ‘benefits’ include company-funded ‘luxury travel and accommodations’ and a ‘substantial salary’ that purportedly enabled Ms. Holmes to lead a ‘luxurious lifestyle,’ including ‘driving a luxury SUV, renting an expensive home, and purchasing expensive merchandise,’” the attorneys wrote.

Holmes' lifestyle these days is anything but lavish. On Nov. 18, 2022, the Theranos founder was sentenced to 135 months in prison (11 years and 3 months) for defrauding investors. Restitution will be decided at a later date. Once released, Holmes will be required to undergo three years of supervision.

While the court has ordered Holmes to surrender herself on April 27, 2023, she has requested to delay serving her prison term due to the recent birth of her second child.

Holmes is expected to appear in court on March 17, 2023, where the matter will be discussed. In the meantime, Holmes has reportedly been living with her husband, Billy Evans, at their 74-acre mansion in the Green Gables Estate in Woodside, Calif., per Esquire.

Following her prison sentence, it seems unlikely that Holmes will be named on any Forbes lists of billionaires any time soon. For starters, the 2018 SEC settlement bars her from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years.

There’s also the issue of her reputation. “I can’t believe Elizabeth Holmes will get another shot with investors,” Ronn Torossian, the CEO of the public relations firm 5WPR, told the Bay Area News Group. “I can’t believe Elizabeth Holmes will be given another shot to run a company with anyone else involved in it. Maybe, maybe, maybe she could recover a bit of her brand. But I doubt it.”