Elizabeth Holmes will have to get used to being constantly monitored after starting her 11-year sentence on May 30.
According to John Carreyrou’s book “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was concerned with tracking how many hours her employees worked and would find methods to keep them working late.
One of these methods was having dinner delivered to Theranos’ office every night. According to the book, Holmes scheduled the delivery between 8 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., implying that staff were frequently not leaving work until 10 p.m.
Carreyrou’s reporting for Street Wall Journal stated Theranos’ faulty blood testing equipment. For the book he spoke to dozens of insiders at the company that was once valued at $9 billion.
In January 2022, Holmes was found guilty of four charges of fraud and sentenced to over 11 years in jail.
Ordering community dinners was apparently one of the strange ways Holmes used to both inspire and intimidate Theranos staff, as she tried to model herself on Steve Jobs.
According to the book, Holmes’ aides would watch employees’ arrival and departure times each day, while IT specialists would monitor the software on their computers. Carreyrou also had her team add employees on Facebook and report Holmes what they were posting.
The surveillance state Holmes seems to run at Theranos might be similar to her new life at a federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas.
According to The Journal and an inmate handbook for the Bryan camp, she will be woken at 6 a.m. every day and subjected to five daily headcounts.
Insider reached out to Holmes’ lawyers for comment, but they refused to respond.