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.

The post Elizabeth Holmes fails to overturn her Theranos fraud conviction appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

CORONA, CA — A Corona resident was sentenced to serve six years in jail for his decade-long scheme of filing fraudulent tax returns for his clients, defrauding the IRS of at least $28 million, authorities said Tuesday.

Salvador Gonzalez received his sentence Monday and will have to pay $403,908 in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California.

Gonzalez’s scheme began in 2013 when he opened Grace’s Lighthouse Resource Center, Inc., a tax preparation business under which he prepared thousands of returns for Corona residents.

Gonzalez would direct his clients to create a fake corporation and to title their homes, cars and other assets under it. Then, an associate would prepare a sham tax return for each of these corporations and ask clients to record fake business expenses in a spreadsheet.

Clients included personal expenses such as mortgage payments, car payments and utility bills. Prepared tax returns inevitably showed a loss, which trickled down to the clients’ income tax returns and fradulently reduced the amount of taxes each client paid, according to the Justice Department.

These fraudulent business losses offset clients income. Gonzalez also faked deductions on their returns, such as unreimbursed employee expenses, cash contributions to charity and medical and dental expenses. Due to these practices, his clients paid much less than they owed in taxes.

For these services, Gonzalez charged clients a flat fee of $500 per tax return. By 2019, he started charging clients 1% of their gross income as a fee for his services.

The complaint seeks to bar Gonzalez from preparing, assisting in, directing or supervising the preparation or filing of federal tax returns, amended tax returns or other related documents or forms for others, the Justice Department said.

Over the past 10 years, the Justice Department says it has obtained injunctions against hundreds of similarly fraudulent tax preparers.

“Taxpayers seeking a return preparer should remain vigilant against unscrupulous tax preparers,” the department said.

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