The three-judge panel in San Francisco also upheld the fraud conviction of Holmes’ former business partner and lover Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani — as well as a lower’s court order for the two to pay $452 million in restitution.

Holmes was CEO throughout Theranos’ turbulent 15-year history, claimed her startup had developed a revolutionary medical device that could detect a multitude of diseases and conditions from a few drops of blood. But the technology never worked, and the claims were false.

A 41-year-old mother of two small children, Holmes began serving her 11-year sentence in May 2023 at a federal prison in Texas. Her listed release date at the Federal Bureau of Prisons is currently March 19, 2032.

Balwani, 59, was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison in California for his role in the scam and is set to be released in 2033.

The pair alleged in their appeal that legal errors were committed during their separate trials in 2022 when the court allowed some testimony, including that of a former Theranos employee, and improperly prohibited other testimony.

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen rejected the claims, writing in the 54-page ruling that they failed to prove any violations or major errors by the lower court.

Attorneys for Holmes and Balwani did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment by The Associated Press.

Holmes saw a meteoric rise in Silicon Valley that landed her on the covers of business magazines that hailed her as the next Steve Jobs and raised nearly $1 billion in investments from software magnate Larry Ellison, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family behind Walmart, and many others.

While wooing investors, Holmes leveraged a high-powered Theranos board that included former Defense Secretary James Mattis, who testified against her during her trial, and two former secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and the late George Shultz, whose son, Alexander submitted a statement blasting Holmes for concocting a scheme that played Shultz “for the fool.”

The deception came to light in 2015 after a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal and a regulatory audit of Theranos uncovered potentially dangerous flaws in the company’s technology, leading to its eventual collapse.

One of Silicon Valley’s biggest scandals, the pair’s blood-testing hoax has been dissected in a book, an HBO documentary and an award-winning TV series.

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Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has apparently behaved well enough during the first six weeks of her more than 11-year prison sentence for duping investors in her blood-testing hoax to be eligible for release nearly two years ahead of schedule, federal officials confirmed Tuesday.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons currently projects that Holmes, 39, will be released from a Bryan, Texas, prison on December 29, 2032. That would be 115 months, or slightly more than 9 1/2 years, after she began her prison sentence of 11 years and three months imposed by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila last November.

Holmes was convicted on four counts of fraud and conspiracy following a high-profile trial in San Jose, California, that riveted Silicon Valley for months.

Her prison sentence hasn’t changed, but like all prisoners who follow the rules she can qualify for an early release under the federal government’s “good time” guidelines. Her projected release date — a few weeks before her 49th birthday — is in line with a prisoner serving her length of sentence.

When Davila sentenced Holmes, legal experts predicted she might be able to get out of federal prison in about nine years.

The Bureau of Prisons declined to explain the specific reasons for Holmes’ projected release date, citing “privacy, safety, and security reasons” in a statement provided Tuesday to The Associated Press.

“Every inmate earns good conduct time and is projected in their projected release date,” the statement pointed out.

Holmes’ former lover and top lieutenant at Theranos — Ramesh “Sunny Balwani” — is also on track for an early release from his nearly 13-year prison sentence after being convicted of 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last year following a separate trial. Balwani’s projected release date is April 1, 2034, according to the Bureau of Prisons. That would be nearly 11 years after he began his sentence at a Southern California prison.

Both Holmes and Balwani, 57, are hoping to get out even earlier as their lawyers pursue appeals seeking to overturn their respective convictions.

Although they had separate trials, Holmes and Balwani were accused of essentially the same crimes centered on a ruse touting Theranos’ blood-testing system as a breakthrough in health care. The claims helped the company become a Silicon Valley sensation that raised nearly $1 billion from investors and at one point anointed Holmes with a $4.5 billion fortune, based on her 50% stake in Theranos.

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BRYAN, Texas (AP) — Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes entered a Texas prison Tuesday where she could spend the next 11 years for overseeing a blood-testing hoax that became a parable about greed and hubris in Silicon Valley.

Holmes, 39, could be seen from outside the prison’s gates walking into the federal women’s prison camp located in Bryan, Texas, wearing jeans, a brown sweater and smiling as she spoke with two prison employees accompanying her.

The minimum-security facility — where the federal judge who sentenced Holmes in November recommended she be incarcerated — is about 95 miles (150 kilometers) northwest of Houston, where she grew up aspiring to become a technology visionary along the lines of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

As she begins her sentence, Holmes is leaving behind two young children — a son born in July 2021 a few weeks before the start of her trial and a 3-month old daughter who was conceived after a jury convicted her on four felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.

She was free on bail up until Tuesday, most recently living in the San Diego area with the children’s father, William “Billy” Evans. The couple met in 2017 around the same time Holmes was under investigation for the collapse of Theranos, a startup she founded after dropping out of Stanford University when she was just 19.

While she was building up Theranos, Holmes grew closer to Ramesh, “Sunny” Balwani, who would become her romantic partner as well as an investor and fellow executive in the Palo Alto, California, company.

Together, Holmes and Balwani promised Theranos would revolutionize health care with a technology that could quickly scan for diseases and other problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

The hype surrounding that purported breakthrough helped Theranos raise nearly $1 billion from enthralled investors, assemble an influential board of directors that include former Presidential cabinet members George Shultz, Henry Kissinger and James Mattis and turned Holmes into a Silicon Valley sensation with a fortune valued at $4.5 billion on paper in 2014.

But it all blew up after serious dangerous flaws in Theranos’ technology were exposed in a series of explosive articles in The Wall Street Journal that Holmes and Balwani tried to thwart. Holmes and Balwani, who had been secretly living together while running Theranos, broke up after the Journal’s revelations and the company collapsed. In 2018, the U.S. Justice Department charged both with a litany of white-collar crimes in a case aimed at putting a stop to the Silicon Valley practice of overselling the capabilities of a still-developing technology — a technique that became known as “fake it ’til you make it.”

Holmes admitted making mistakes at Theranos, but steadfastly denied committing crimes during seven often-fascinating days of testimony on the witness stand during her trial. At one point, she told the jury about being sexually and emotionally abused by Balwani while he controlled her in ways that she said clouded her thinking. Balwani’s attorney steadfastly denied Holmes allegations, which was one of the key reasons they were tried separately.

Balwani, 57, was convicted on 12 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy in a trial that began two months after Holmes’ ended. He is currently serving a nearly 13-year sentence in a Southern California prison.

Maintaining she was treated unfairly during the trial, Holmes sought to remain free while she appeals her conviction. But that bid was rejected by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who presided over her trial, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving her no other avenue left to follow but the one that will take her to prison nearly 20 years after she founded Theranos.

Attorneys representing Holmes did not immediately respond when contacted by The Associated Press for statement on Tuesday.

FPC Bryan, a minimum-security prison camp located encompasses about 37 acres (15 hectares) of land and houses about 650 women — including “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” star Jennifer Shah, who was sentenced earlier this year to 6 1/2 years in prison for defrauding thousands of people in a yearslong telemarketing scam.

Most federal prison camps don’t even have fences and house those the Bureau of Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. The prison camps also often have minimal staffing and many of the people incarcerated there work at prison jobs.

According to a 2016 FPC Bryan inmate handbook, those in the Texas facility who are eligible to work can earn between 12 cents and $1.15 per hour in their job assignments, which include food service roles and factory employment operated by Federal Prison Industries.

Federal prison camps were originally designed with low security to make operations easier and to allow inmates tasked with performing work at the prison, like landscaping and maintenance, to avoid repeatedly checking in and out of a main prison facility. But the lax security opened a gateway for contraband, such as drugs, cellphones and weapons. The limited security has also led to a number of escapes from prison camps.

In November, a man incarcerated at another federal prison camp in Arizona pulled out a smuggled gun in a visitation area and tried to shoot his wife in the head. The gun jammed and no one was injured. But the incident exposed major security flaws at the facility and the agency’s director ordered a review of security at all federal prison camps around the U.S.

____________

Liedtke reported from San Francisco. AP U.S. Law Enforcement News Editor Mike Balsamo and AP Business Writer Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed to this report.

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — 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 (160 km) 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 that 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.”

___

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

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes appears to be soon bound for prison after an appeals court Tuesday rejected her bid to remain free while she tries to overturn her conviction in a blood-testing hoax that brought her fleeting fame and fortune.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling comes nearly three weeks after Holmes deployed a last-minute legal maneuver to delay the start of her 11-year prison sentence. She had been previously ordered to surrender to authorities on April 27 by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, who sentenced her in November.

Davila will now set a new date for Holmes, 39, to leave her current home in the San Diego area and report to prison.

The punishment will separate Holmes from her current partner, William “Billy” Evans, their 1-year-old son, William, and 3-month-old daughter, Invicta. Holmes’ pregnancy with Invicta — Latin for “invincible,” or “undefeated” — began after a jury convicted her on four counts of fraud and conspiracy in January 2022.

Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her sentence at a women’s prison in Bryan, Texas. It hasn’t been disclosed whether the federal Bureau of Prisons accepted Davila’s recommendation or assigned Holmes to another facility.

Holmes’ former lover and top lieutenant at Theranos, Ramesh “Sunny’ Balwani, began a nearly 13-year prison sentence in April after being convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last July in a separate trial. Balwani, 57, was incarcerated in a Southern California prison after losing a similar effort to remain free on bail while appealing his conviction.

The verdict against Holmes came after a 46 days of trial testimony and other evidence that cast a spotlight on a culture of greed and hubris that infected Silicon Valley as technology became a more pervasive influence on society and the economy during the past 20 years.

The trial’s most riveting moments unfolded when Holmes took the witness stand to testify in her own defense.

Besides telling how she founded Theranos as a teenager after dropping out of Stanford University in 2003, Holmes accused Balwani of abusing her emotionally and sexually. She also asserted she never stopped believing Theranos would revolutionize healthcare with a technology that she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of diseases and other potential problems with just a few drops of blood.

While pursuing that audacious ambition, Holmes raised nearly $1 billion from a list of well-heeled investors that included Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Those sophisticated investors all lost their money after a Wall Street Journal investigation and regulatory reviews exposed dangerous flaws in Theranos’ technology.

Holmes’s lawyers have been fighting her conviction on grounds of alleged mistakes and misconduct that occurred during her trial. They have also contended errors and abuses that biased the jury were so egregious that she should be allowed to stay out of prison while the appeal unfolds — a request that has now been rebuffed by both Davila and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

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MICHAEL LIEDTKE | AP News

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes requested a new trial Tuesday, asserting in a court filing that a key witness for the prosecution now regrets the role he played in her conviction for investor fraud and conspiracy related to her failed blood-testing startup.

The petition centers on the reliability of testimony provided by former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff, who said he repeatedly raised concerns about the accuracy of bloods tests that were being administered to patients during his tenure in 2013 and 2014.

Prosecutors highlighted Rosendorff’s testimony during their closing arguments to a jury that convicted Holme s on four felony counts of investor fraud and conspiracy earlier this year after a nearly four-month trial. The same jury acquitted Holmes on charges of fraud and conspiracy against patients who had their blood tested by Theranos.

Rosendorff, reached via LinkedIn, said he had no comment, adding “Do not contact me.”

Holmes, 38, is currently free on bail, but is facing up to 20 years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Oct. 17 in San Jose, California.

Her lawyers argued in a 17-page filing that Rosendorff is now expressing misgivings about his testimony, based on recent actions described in the court document.

The filing states that Rosendorff appeared at the home Holmes shares with her partner, William Evans, on the evening of August 8 in an attempt to meet with her. Evans intercepted Rosendorff, according to the document, and asked him to leave.

Before departing, according to the filing, Rosendorff told Evans that during his trial testimony “he tried to answer the questions honestly but that the prosecutors tried to make everyone look bad” and now feels like “he had done something wrong.” Before he appeared at Holmes’ residence, the document said, Rosendorff left a 30-second voicemail for one of her lawyers asking for a face-to-face meeting with Holmes because he thought it could be “quite healing” for both of them.

In their filing, Holmes lawyers said they had not been able to ask Rosendorff for further information about his reflections on his trial testimony for ethical reasons. The lawyers proposed an Oct. 3 hearing to discuss why they believe Rosendorff’s recent actions merit a new trial.

Also on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila formally rejected a request to set aside the jury’s verdicts in Holmes’ trial. Davila’s decision cited Rosendorff’s testimony in support of his ruling.

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The eight men and four women on the jury have been meeting in a San Jose, California, federal courthouse after absorbing reams of evidence in a three-month trial that captivated Silicon Valley.

The jurors are scheduled to resume their discussions Wednesday morning.

Last week, the jury sent out two notes to U.S. District Judge Edward Davila — one making a swiftly rejected request to take their instructions home with them for further study and another that that allowed them a replay of a 2013 recording of Holmes discussing Theranos’ dealings with prospective investors.

For the second consecutive day this week, the jurors went through Tuesday’s session without providing any clues as to how far long they are in their deliberations.

The case has attracted worldwide attention. At its core is the rise and fall of Holmes, who started Theranos as a 19-year-old college dropout and then went on to break through Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture with her bold claims and fundraising savvy. She become a billionaire on paper before it all evaporated amid allegations she was more of a charlatan than an entrepreneur.

MICHAEL LIEDTKE | Contributed

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Fallen entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes has finished her attempt to persuade a jury that she suffered lapses in business judgment but never engaged in fraud while running blood-testing startup Theranos.

Her defense lawyers rested their case Wednesday shortly after she walked off the witness stand.

That gave Holmes the final say among the more than 30 witnesses who testified in a high-profile trial that began three months ago i n the heart of Silicon Valley. It’s the same locale where Holmes became a media sensation before Theranos collapsed in ruins amid evidence that its ballyhooed blood-testing technology was dangerously flawed.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila recessed the trial for a week to allow time for refining the instructions to the jury in a complicated case what began 3 1/2 years ago with Holmes’ indictment on multiple counts of fraud. If convicted, she could be sentenced 20 years in prison.

Closing arguments are scheduled for Dec. 16-17. Depending on the duration of those arguments, the jury could get the case late in the day of Dec. 17 and continue deliberations during the week of Dec. 20.

The abrupt end of the defense’s case came as somewhat of a surprise. Holmes’ lawyers had indicated that they might call on a psychologist to discuss the allegations of emotional and sexual abuse Holmes, 37, had raised earlier in her testimony against her former lover and business partner, Sunny Balwani, 56. Holmes was just one of the three witnesses to testify for the defense, but she spent more than 25 hours on the stand since she was sworn Nov. 19.

The decision to let Holmes herself have the last word may have been an indication that her lawyers believed she did a compelling job telling her story. Or they may have feared that the psychological experts that prosecutors intended to call — if the defense called theirs — might undermine their case.

Holmes, Theranos’ CEO for 15 years, spent some more time Wednesday blaming Balwani for neglecting to fix the blood-testing problems that he had told her he would address as the company’s chief operating officer and her most trusted adviser.

She also made it clear that Balwani was a volatile man who she tried not to “ignite” whenever he would “blow off steam through texts.” She also emphasized she wasn’t responsible for all the key decisions at Theranos from 2010 until she dumped Balwani in 2016.

That six-year stretch spanned a period when Holmes was the subject of flattering articles portraying her as a tech visionary. But a series of explosive articles published in The Wall Street Journal beginning in late 2015 revealed that Theranos’ blood-tests were producing faulty results that misled doctors and patients. John Carreyrou, the reporter who wrote those pivotal stories, sat in the back of a packed San Jose, California, courtroom throughout Holmes’ testimony.

Before Theranos melted down, Holmes and Balwani raised more than $900 million from a list of billionaire investors that included media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family behind Walmart. That while assembling a board of directors that included former Cabinet members ranging from the Nixon to Trump administrations.

Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s attorney, has vehemently denied Holmes’ attempts to blame him for Theranos’ downfall, as well as the allegations of partner abuse. He told Davila that Balwani would exercise his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if he were called to testify during Holmes’ trial. Balwani is facing similar fraud charges in a trial scheduled to start next month.

But before that drama begins, a jury of 10 men and four women, including two alternates, will finally get their chance to determine if Holmes will be branded as a crook, instead of Silicon Valley sensation who revolutionized health care as she set out to do in 2003 when she dropped out of Stanford University to found Theranos.

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Her testimony, which focused largely on her enthusiasm based on positive early tests of that blood-testing technology, may be her best shot to avoid conviction on charges of criminal fraud. Prosecutors alleged she duped investors and patients into believing she had invented a breakthrough in blood-testing technology.

Monday’s proceedings resumed after a roughly 90-minute delay, with Holmes again at the witness stand wearing a cobalt dress with a black blazer. She spent most of her time describing clinical studies and other records extolling the effectiveness of a small blood-testing device made by Theranos, a startup she founded in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University at 19.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila didn’t explain why he met with lawyers from both sides of the case behind closed doors while a masked — and befuddled — audience sat in a packed courtroom.

Holmes’ latest round of testimony came after her lawyers called her to the stand during the final hour of Friday’s proceedings in what has been the most dramatic moment of a high-profile trial that began in early September.

Anticipation of Holmes’ return to the stand Monday drew a large crowd outside of the San Jose, California, courthouse where the trial is occurring, with the first person lining up around 1 a.m. PT. The roughly 35 people who got into the small courtroom Monday included one of Holmes’ biggest foils — former Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, who wrote a series of explosive articles starting in October 2015 that triggered Theranos’ collapse and the ensuing criminal case.

Responding to friendly questions posed by one of her attorneys gave Holmes a chance to sway the jurors who will determine her fate. If convicted, Holmes, a former billionaire who is now 37, could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

After being prompted by her attorney to explain some technical terms about blood testing, Holmes looked directly at the jury sitting a few feet to her right and delved into the topic as if she were a teacher addressing her students.

Having shed the mask that she’s worn while sitting stoically through trial, Holmes also occasionally smiled as she discussed the studies. She also tried to make eye contact with the 14 jurors, including two alternates, as they walked out during a morning break and later at the conclusion of the day’s proceedings.

The studies, conducted with several major pharmaceutical companies from 2008 to 2010, showed the third generation of a Theranos device known as the Edison was delivering mostly encouraging results that gave Holmes reason to believe she and the company were on the road to success.

“Results have been excellent,” one report said. Another concluded that the “results have been precise.”

Another exchange between Holmes and her attorney, Kevin Downey, underscored the rote tone of Monday’s testimony. Prompted by Downey, Holmes explained that she defined a success as something that “has successfully achieved the objective of a program.”

The positive reports and Holmes’ testimony seemed primarily aimed at providing insight into Holmes’ state of mind in an attempt to illuminate why she eventually became so effusive about Theranos technology, which she promised would be able to scan for hundreds of potential diseases and other health problems with just a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

But by 2015, Theranos’ own lab director concluded the company’s technology was malfunctioning in ways that produced misleading results that could potentially endanger patients. Theranos wound up running the tests on traditional blood-testing machines while continuing to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaires and less sophisticated investors.

Other evidence presented at the trial showed Holmes distributed misleading information in 2013 about a purported partnership with Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies that helped Theranos raise money.

Having spent only about three hours on the stand so far, Holmes’ testimony is expected to eventually delve into more intriguing territory.

Before the trial started, Holmes’ lawyers filed documents indicating she intends to blame whatever misconduct that occurred at Theranos on her former lover and the company’s former chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani. Those documents assert that Balwani, who faces a separate criminal trial next year, manipulated Holmes through “intimate partner abuse.” Balwani’s lawyer has blasted those allegations as baseless.

Holmes’ testimony will resume Tuesday morning and is expected to continue into next week.

MICHAEL LIEDTKE | AP News

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The revelations emerged during the eighth day of a high-profile trial revolving around allegations Holmes duped investors, customers and unwitting patients as CEO of Theranos, a company she founded after dropping out of college in 2003 when she was 19.

Holmes briefly became a Silicon Valley sensation while peddling the premise she had invented a breakthrough technology scan for an array of health problems using just a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick.

But Adam Rosendorff, a medical doctor who oversaw Theranos’ clinical laboratory from September 2013 through November 2014, drew a darker picture Tuesday while testifying as witness for the federal government prosecutors trying to convince a jury to convict Holmes on 12 counts of fraud.

Holmes, 37, has pleaded innocent, maintaining she poured nearly 15 years of her life pursuing a great idea that simply didn’t pan out. She could be sentenced to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Rosendorff insisted that he repeatedly tried to warn Holmes and Theranos‘ chief operating officer and Holmes’ former lover, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, that the tests were so rampantly inaccurate that he was being besieged by complaints from doctors.

But Holmes and Balwani seemed more interested in cultivating Theranos’ image as a potentially game-changing company than protecting people’s health, according to Rosendorff.

“The number and severity of issues had reached a crescendo,” Rosendorff testified in the San Jose, California, courtroom, explaining why he decided to leave Theranos rather than risk breaking his oath as a doctor to “do no harm.” He said he was so appalled that he refused to shake Balwani’s extended hand when he finally left Theranos.

Prosecutors also displayed a series of text messages exchanged between Holmes and Balwani, attempting to prove they were more interested in pursuing fame and fortune than protecting people’s health.

At the same time Rosendorff was raising objections about Theranos’ blood-testing technology, Holmes sent at text to Balwani to let him know that she had completed deals securing about $150 million from Murdoch and the Walton family, which is behind Walmart.

“They are not investing in our company,” Balwani texted back. “They are investing in our destiny.”

Those investments helped value privately held Theranos at $9 billion, with Holmes holding a $4.5 billion stake. Just a few weeks after Rosendorff left Theranos in protest, Holmes texted Balwani in December 2014 to share her optimism about the upcoming new year.

“This year is our year,” Holmes texted Balwani. “We can never forget that tiger.”

Holmes, who is now married to a different man, has accused Balwani of inflicting “intimate partner abuse,” that affected some of her actions and statements while she was running Theranos. Balwani’s lawyer has vehemently denied those allegations. Balwani is also facing fraud charges in a separate trial scheduled to begin next year.

The year 2015, however, turned out to be the beginning of the end for Theranos.

In October of that year, The Wall Street Journal published a series of explosive articles that exposed flaws with Theranos’ technology and triggered government investigations that led to the company’s downfall and led to the current trial. Rosendorff testified that he was among the sources who provided information for those articles. The Wall Street Journal is owned by Murdoch, who is on the government’s list of witnesses to be called to testify during a trial scheduled to continue through mid-December.

One of Holmes’ lawyers, Lance Wade, attempted to poke holes in Rosendorff’s testimony by pointing to several meetings he held with federal prosecutors and other government officials before taking the stand. Wade noted some discrepancies between Rosendorff’s statements during the trial and other sworn testimony he has given in other civil lawsuits brought against Theranos.

“I endeavored earnestly to fulfill my obligations as a lab director,” Rosendorff maintained while Wade questioned his motives.

Rosendorff is scheduled to return to the witness stand Wednesday when the trial resumes.

MICHAEL LIEDTKE | AP News

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