Inside the prison where Elizabeth Holmes will serve out 11 years - alongside a celebrity inmate
By Alice Wright For Dailymail.Com,
2023-05-27When Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes surrenders to authorities this week, her life will change beyond all recognition - as she finally begins her 11-year prison sentence after repeated efforts to delay the inevitable.
Her new digs are a far cry from the $9million San Diego beachfront home she shares with hotel heir husband Billy Evans (who she met at tech bro favorite Burning Man) and their two children.
It is also a far cry from the life she led when at the helm of Theranos - a life of luxe multi-million dollar estates, private jets, flash cars, a security detail and assistants on-hand 24/7 to handle her every whim.
But Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Texas is hardly Alcatraz.
The 'Club Fed' prison, which a judge recommended she serve out her sentence at, is minimum security - and no stranger to high-profile inmates. Prisoners don't even sleep in cells, instead sharing four-person rooms with bunk beds in a dormitory-style set-up - and are even allowed to buy hobby items including crochet needles from the commissary at $1.30 a pop.
Among her possible 'dorm' mates is fellow fraudster and one-time Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah, who reported to Bryan in February to start a six-and-a-half-year sentence for her part in a telemarketing scam that robbed elderly and vulnerable Americans out of millions of dollars.
Holmes, whose legal team has twice successfully made appeals to delay the start of her sentence, is due to report to FPC Bryan on Tuesday.
The shamed one-time business prodigy and darling of Silicon Valley raised almost $1billion from sophisticated investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
She dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 to found Theranos while still a teenager, she vowed to revolutionize healthcare with a technology that would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential health problems by analyzing just a few drops of blood.
The idea made her a Silicon Valley darling and a very rich woman. But Theranos’ blood tests never came close to working the way Holmes had claimed and eventually the company collapsed and she was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors of $100million. Murdoch is owed $125 million under the restitution order.
Holmes has spent her last few weeks of freedom celebrating Mother's Day , going to the zoo and playing on the beach with her young son, William, two, newborn daughter, Invicta, and husband, Billy Evans.
But at 'Club Fed' Bryan, Holmes - who was estimated to be worth $4.5billion at Theranos's peak - will be just 100 miles from her hometown of Houston.
She will be surrounded by around 600 mostly non-violent female offenders who have committed white-collar crimes.
Former prisoners include January 6 rioter Jenna Ryan who served 60 days at the facility and Hot Pockets heiress Michelle Janavs, one of their parents caught up in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal.
Janvas was sentenced to five months in 2020 for paid college admissions scheme mastermind Rick Singer $100,000 to have a proctor correct her two daughters' ACT exam answers. She also agreed to pay $200,000 to have one of her daughters labeled as a fake beach volleyball recruit at the University of Southern California but was arrested before the girl was formally admitted, prosecutors said.
Texas realtor Ryan, who took a private jet to the Capitol on January 6, revealed after her prison term that she ' watched a lot of TV and ate bologna sandwiches ' during her stint there.
She told her Twitter followers last year that 'I was really really blessed because I met really great people.
'I prayed every day, I read the Bible, got close to God, watched a lot of TV, read a lot of books.'
Aside from the 'really great people' that Ryan cites, the facility's handbook for new prisoners states that wake-up is 6am, then inmates make their beds and clean their cells.
Sleeping-in or failing to keep their rooms neat can result in disciplinary action and the unit with the best 'sanitation rating' will be called first for meals, with the worst being called last.
Inmates are allowed an hour for each meal, with a basic menu of foods such as chicken, hamburgers, hotdogs, tacos and macaroni.
Breakfast is at 6.30am, lunch at a startlingly early 10.30am and dinner at 4.30pm. Lights out is strictly 10.30pm, but on weekends and holidays, they're allowed an additional hour until 11.30pm.
Holmes will be ditching her one-time trademark black roll-necks for the mandatory pale green khaki prison uniform.
She will be allowed to wear a wedding band and a religious medallion chain, but their value cannot exceed $100.
In a somewhat ironic twist of fate, Holmes, along with the other prisoners, are able to take a business class. If she'd rather steer clear of those, she will instead be able to opt for fork-lift training or a foreign language class.
All inmates, who are counted in a roll-call five times a day, are expected to work in jobs that pay between 12 cents and $1.15 an hour in roles that include serving food and factory work.
If Holmes is curious about how the media covers her imprisonment she will be able to receive subscriptions to her cell.
There are a few luxuries available for purchase from the commissary, such as an $88.40 MP3 player, a neck gaiter for $10.55, ramen to liven up the prison meals for 30 cents and a pint of ice cream for $2.
As a prisoner Holmes will be able to speak to her family via $6 video calls and can have visitors during weekends and holidays between 8am and 5pm - but with only limited physical contact, even with her three-month-old baby and a toddler.
This will surely be a painful chapter in the life of a woman whose future once seemed golden.
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