Elizabeth Holmes‘ attorneys say that she won’t be able to afford $250 a month in restitution payments when she’s released from a Texas prison.
The disgraced Theranos founder was found guilty last January of four fraud-related counts and was sentenced to a little more than 11 years in prison. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former boyfriend and business partner, were ordered to pay more than $452 million in restitution.
Experts previously told Insider that it was common for funds like these to never fully be paid out and that courts looked for ways to collect some of the money, even if it came from assets.
“Assets that the government froze at the onset of a prosecution might be available for restitution,” Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said. “But generally, most restitution is never paid.”
This week, prosecutors proposed that Holmes pay the sum back in $250 monthly increments upon her release, Bloomberg reported.
Prosecutors told a judge this week that the payment plan wasn’t originally determined because of a clerical error, per Bloomberg. But Holmes’ attorneys disagreed that the judge made a mistake, saying that the judge considered “substantial evidence showing Ms. Holmes’ limited financial resources and has appropriately treated Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani differently in sentencing,” per Bloomberg.
In an article in The New York Times last month, Holmes said that she couldn’t even pay her legal bills, adding, “I have to work for the rest of my life to try to pay for it.”
An attorney for Holmes did not respond to a request for comment.
Source: businessinsider