SAN JOSE, Calif. —

As Elizabeth Holmes prepares to report to prison next week, the criminal case that laid bare the blood-testing scam at the heart of her Theranos startup is entering its final phase.

The 11-year sentence represents a comeuppance for the wide-eyed woman who broke through “tech bro” culture to become one of Silicon Valley’s most celebrated entrepreneurs, only to be exposed as a fraud. Along the way, Holmes became a symbol of the shameless hyperbole that often saturates startup culture.

But questions still linger about her true intentions — so many that even the federal judge who presided over her trial seemed mystified. And Holmes' defenders continue to ask whether the punishment fits the crime.

At 39, she seems most likely to be remembered as Silicon Valley’s Icarus — a high-flying entrepreneur burning with reckless ambition whose odyssey culminated in convictions for fraud and conspiracy.

Her motives are still somewhat mysterious, and some supporters say federal prosecutors targeted her unfairly in their zeal to bring down one of the most prominent practitioners of fake-it-til-you-make-it — the tech sector's brand of self-promotion that sometimes veers into exaggeration and blatant lies to raise money.

Holmes will begin to pay the price for her deceit on May 30 when she is scheduled begin the sentence that will separate her from her two children — a son whose July 2021 birth delayed the start of her trial and a 3-month-old daughter conceived after her conviction.

She is expected to be incarcerated in Bryan, Texas, about 100 miles northwest of her hometown of Houston. The prison was recommended by the judge who sentenced Holmes, but authorities have not publicly disclosed where she will be held.

Her many detractors contend she deserves to be in prison for peddling a technology that she repeatedly boasted would quickly scan for hundreds of diseases and other health problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

The technology never worked as promised. Instead, Theranos tests produced wildly unreliable results that could have endangered patients' lives — one of the most frequently cited reasons why she deserved to be prosecuted.

Before those lies were uncovered in a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal beginning in October 2015, Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from a list of savvy investors including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It was the duping of those investors that led to her prison sentence and a $452 million restitution bill.

Holmes' stake in Theranos at one point catapulted her paper wealth to $4.5 billion. She never sold any of her stock in the company, though trial evidence left no doubt she reveled in the trappings of fame and fortune — so much so that she and the father of her children, William “Billy” Evans, lived on a palatial Silicon Valley estate during the trial.

The theory that Holmes was running an elaborate scam was buttressed by trial evidence documenting her efforts to prevent the Journal's investigation from being published. That campaign compelled John Carreyrou — the reporter responsible for those bombshell stories — to attend court and position himself in Holmes' line of vision when she took the witness stand.

Holmes also signed off on surveillance aimed at intimidating Theranos employees who helped uncover the flaws with the blood-testing technology. The whistleblowers included Tyler Shultz, the grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, whom Holmes befriended and persuaded to join the Theranos board.

Tyler Shultz became so unnerved by Holmes' efforts to shut him up that he began sleeping with a knife under his pillow, according to a wrenching statement delivered by his father, Alex, at her sentencing.

Holmes' supporters still contend she always had good intentions and was unfairly scapegoated by the Justice Department. They insist she simply deployed the same over-the-top promotion tactics as many other tech executives, including Elon Musk, who has repeatedly made misleading statements about the capabilities of Tesla's self-driving cars.

According to those supporters, Holmes was singled out because she was a woman who briefly eclipsed the men who customarily bask in Silicon Valley's spotlight, and the trial turned her into a latter-day version of Hester Prynne — the protagonist in the 1850 novel “The Scarlet Letter.”

Holmes steadfastly maintained her innocence during seven often-riveting days of testimony in her own defense — a spectacle that caused people to line up shortly after midnight to secure one of the few dozen seats available in the San Jose courtroom.

On one memorable day, Holmes recounted how she had never gotten over the trauma of being raped while enrolled at Stanford University. She then described being subjected to a long-running pattern of emotional and sexual abuse by her former lover and Theranos conspirator, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, and suggested his stifling control blurred her thinking.

Balwani's lawyer, Jeffrey Coopersmith, denied those allegations during the trial. In Balwani's subsequent trial, Coopersmith unsuccessfully tried to depict his client as Holmes' pawn.

Balwani, 57, is now serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence for fraud and conspiracy.

When it came time to sentence the then-pregnant Holmes in November, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila seemed as puzzled as anyone about why she did what she did.

"This is a fraud case where an exciting venture went forward with great expectations and hope, only to be dashed by untruth, misrepresentations, hubris and plain lies," Davila lamented while Holmes stood before him. “I suppose we step back and we look at this, and we think what is the pathology of fraud?”

The judge also hearkened back to the days when Silicon Valley consisted mostly of orchards farmed by immigrants. That was before the land was ceded to the tech boom beginning in 1939 when William Hewlett and David Packard founded a company bearing their surnames in a one-car garage in Palo Alto — the same city where Theranos was based.

“You’ll recall the wonderful innovation of those two individuals in that small garage,” Davila reminded everyone in the rapt courtroom. “No exotic automobiles or lavish lifestyle, just a desire to create for society’s benefit through honest hard work. And that, I would hope, would be the continuing story, the legacy and practice of Silicon Valley.”

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Michael Liedtke has been covering Silicon Valley for The Associated Press for 23 years.

Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos who was convicted earlier this month on four out of 11 federal fraud and conspiracy charges, will not be sentenced until Sept. 26, according to a new filing.

The prosecution and defense had proposed Sept. 12 for a sentencing hearing in a court filing Tuesday, stating in the filing that "following Labor Day 2022 would be appropriate in light of ongoing proceedings in a related matter," a reference to the upcoming trial of Holmes' second-in-command at Theranos who faces the same charges as her. In a court order signed Wednesday, Judge Edward Davila, who is presiding over Holmes' case, set her sentencing hearing for later in September. By that point, it will have been more than a full year since her trial kicked off.

Until then, Holmes remains free on a $500,000 bond secured by property, according to the earlier filing from the prosecution and defense.

According to the indictment, Holmes faces up to 20 years in prison as well as a fine of $250,000 plus restitution for each count. Judge Davila will ultimately decide Holmes' sentencing as he sees fit, using sentencing guidelines as a reference.

Holmes, 37, was first indicted more than three years ago alongside Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, the former COO and president of her failed blood testing startup who was also her ex-boyfriend. Their trials were severed after Holmes indicated in court filings that she intended to point the finger at Balwani, accusing him of psychological and sexual abuse. Holmes testified to this when she took the stand in her own defense. Balwani has denied the abuse allegations in court filings.

Balwani's trial, originally set to begin this week, has been delayed, first due to the length of Holmes' trial -- which spanned four months including deliberations -- and then due to the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus. In a separate court filing Tuesday, the prosecution and defense in Balwani's trial have proposed March 9 as the date to begin jury selection. Balwani has pleaded not guilty.

Holmes, who started Theranos at the age of 19, claimed to have developed revolutionary blood-testing technology that could accurately and affordably test for a range of conditions using just a few drops of blood. Once regarded as the next Steve Jobs, Holmes raised $945 million from investors, catapulting her startup to a $9 billion valuation and making her a paper billionaire in the process. But her technology didn't work as she claimed, and it all came crashing down.

After 50 hours of jury deliberations spread out over the course of seven days, Holmes was found guilty of four charges, including one count of conspiracy to defraud investors and three wire fraud counts tied to specific investors. The jury acquitted Holmes of three counts of defrauding patients and one count of conspiracy to defraud patients.

There were three additional wire fraud counts tied to other investors that jurors could not reach a unanimous agreement on and for which Judge Davila declared a mistrial. The prosecution indicated in the proposed joint filing that it intends to drop these three counts and plans to file a formal motion to do so by the end of this week.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — The jury that is weighing fraud charges against former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes started their second week of deliberations Monday.

Holmes faces 11 criminal charges alleging that she duped investors and patients by hailing her company's blood-testing technology as a medical breakthrough.

Holmes claimed to have invented a medical revolution with Edison, a machine that could run several blood tests on a single sample. She said the invention would save time, resources and patients from needless needle pricks.

Theranos' value soared, and Holmes was dubbed a rising star in the tech sector.

But things began to unravel for Holmes after the machine produced inaccurate test results and didn't work the way she described it would.

The eight men and four women on the jury have been meeting in a San Jose, California, federal courthouse after absorbing reams of evidence during a high-profile trial that has captivated Silicon Valley since it began in early September.

The jurors deliberated for three days last week before adjourning Thursday afternoon for the holiday weekend.

If convicted on all counts, the 37-year-old Holmes could face up to 20 years in prison.

SAN JOSE, Calif —

Lawyers for opposing sides in the trial of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes are expected to wrap up closing arguments Friday, paving the way for a jury to begin deliberations over criminal charges accusing her of turning her blood-testing startup into a massive scam.

The case revolving around Holmes' meteoric rise to become a self-made billionaire and ensuing downfall has captivated Silicon Valley for the past three months as the long-delayed trial unfolded.

That fixation intensified after Holmes made the risky decision to take the witness stand for seven days in front of the jurors who will determine her fate. The jurors, after attorneys wrap up closing arguments that began Thursday, will then be instructed by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila on how to proceed with deliberations.

Holmes, 37, faces 11 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy. If convicted, she could receive a sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison less than a year after giving birth to her first child.

Federal prosecutors have cast Holmes as a desperate con artist who brazenly lied to get rich. Attorneys representing Holmes say she was a well-meaning entrepreneur who never stopped trying to perfect Theranos' blood-testing technology and deliver on her pledge to improve health care.

The concept was so compelling, Theranos and Holmes were able to raise more than $900 million from billionaire investors such as media magnate Rupert Murdoch. The company struck partnerships with major retailers Walgreens and Safeway and Holmes quickly began to grace the covers of national magazines as a wunderkind.

Unknown to most people outside Theranos, the company's blood-testing technology was flawed, often producing inaccurate results that could have endangered the lives of patients who took the tests.

After the flaws were exposed in 2015 and 2016, Theranos eventually collapsed and the Justice Department filed its criminal case in 2018.

When they begin deliberations, jurors will consider the testimony of 32 witnesses and more than 900 exhibits submitted in a trial that has lasted more than 14 weeks. Besides Holmes, other prominent witnesses that have testified include former U.S. Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis — a former Theranos board member — and former Safeway CEO Steve Burd, who was negotiating a deal with Holmes to bring Theranos' technology into its supermarkets.

The defense team for fallen Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes rested its case Wednesday.

Holmes is currently on trial for fraud.

According to the Associated Press, closing arguments are tentatively scheduled for Dec. 16-17.

The news outlet reported that the 37-year-old is charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. She faces up to 20 years in prison.

Holmes has pleaded not guilty.

Holmes allegedly defrauded investors and patients by telling them she'd invented a machine that could detect hundreds of diseases with a finger prick.

Things began to unravel for Holmes after the blood-testing machine, dubbed Edison, produced inaccurate test results and didn't work the way she described it would.