DLNews Crime:

A few years ago, Silicon Valley celebrated her as a child prodigy.

Former tech billionaire Elizabeth Holmes (38) has now been sentenced to 11 years in prison for fraud at her failed start-up Theranos.

Holmes was found guilty on four counts of investor fraud by a jury in January. Federal Judge Edward Davila now handed down a sentence of 135 months, or 11 years and three months, in prison. However, the pregnant 38-year-old does not have to start her prison sentence before April 27 next year.

The penalty is a hard blow for Holmes. Her lawyers had spoken out for a maximum of 18 months in prison and otherwise pleaded for house arrest and community hours as punishment. The prosecution had called for a minimum of 15 years in prison. According to the law, Holmes could have been sentenced to 20 years. According to US media, she has already announced that she will appeal the verdict.

Her conviction in the same California courtroom in which Holmes was convicted of four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy in January marks another climax in the story of a dizzying rise -- and a dramatic and profound fall.

Elizabeth Holmes was 19 when she founded her start-up, Theranos, in 2003. The promise: With a few drops of blood from the fingertip and their technology, dozens of diseases, including cancer and HIV, could be diagnosed much faster and cheaper than in conventional laboratories.

As a child, Holmes was terrified of needles used to draw blood – this is how he came up with the idea. For her start-up, she gave up her studies at the elite Stanford University in California. Success came quickly. And for years, the charismatic young entrepreneur was celebrated as a Silicon Valley pioneer and became the youngest self-made billionaire in the USA.

She won financially strong investors and prominent supporters such as ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Theranos has been valued at ten billion dollars, while Forbes magazine estimated Holmes' fortune at 3.6 billion dollars in 2014.

But then the bubble burst! The problem: The advertised device never worked. During demonstrations, partial analyzes were carried out secretly using Siemens devices, among other things. Reports from the Wall Street Journal uncovered the scam.

Holmes has always denied defrauding investors. She admitted mistakes but claimed to have believed in the potential of her technology. She also blamed her ex-boyfriend and former business partner, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, for the scandal. He was also found guilty of fraud in July. The sentence is still pending.