An investor who got duped by Elizabeth Holmes has cried foul over her impending release from prison.
The founder of Theranos, the failed healthcare company that touted a supposed breakthrough in blood testing, is scheduled to move from a minimum-security federal prison to a halfway house next year.
Alan Eisenman, a retired financial planner from Texas and early Theranos investor, said the Justice Department notified him of Holmes’ expected release. The agency is legally required to inform victims of developments in cases.
“Seems like a gift,” he told NBC News.
Eisenman and his wife, Sherrie, invested about $1.2 million in Theranos starting in 2006.
“She was a liar back in 2006 and she’s a liar today,” he said.
Holmes, 42, owes the couple nearly $150,000 out of a total $452 million in restitution for all her victims. So far, Eisenman has “not received a penny” back, he told NBC.
A lawyer who represented Holmes in her 2021 criminal trial did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The tech founder launched Theranos in 2003 when she was just 19. At the time, she claimed the company had revolutionized blood testing by running multiple tests using just a few drops of blood from a finger prick.
Theranos was valued at $9 billion at its height, but The Wall Street Journal exposed it as a scam in 2015, triggering a series of federal investigations. Holmes was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Holmes has been held at the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, over the past three years alongside Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend-accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and Jen Shah of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not respond to an earlier inquiry from the Daily Beast about Holmes’ release. A spokesperson has told several news outlets that it “does not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual, including release plans.”
Holmes has had her sentence shortened multiple times. She was initially expected to be released Feb. 22, 2030. Last year, she applied for a commutation of her sentence, which remains pending.
Eisenman told NBC News that he hopes Holmes would stay in prison through 2030. He also said he opposed any kind of presidential clemency for her.
Holmes has yet again stirred buzz after Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim released the trailer for You Can See Everything, their documentary about the Silicon Valley flameout.
Eisenman said he plans to see the documentary when it releases next month, though he expressed concern that it might paint a sympathetic picture of Holmes.
“She’s obviously manipulative,” he told NBC News. “If people don’t see that, then they’re blind. She’s the most conniving person I’ve ever met.”
