Elizabeth Holmes is pregnant with her second child. She's been sentenced to 11 years behind bars.

By now, the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her US$9 billion (AUD$12.5 billion) fraud with blood-testing company Theranos is well known. And this week, a US judge sentenced the 38-year-old to more than 11 years in prison for it.

What some weren't aware of is the fact Holmes is pregnant. Court documents released this week confirmed that Holmes is expecting her second child, who will be born while she is serving her 11-year jail sentence.

Per the court filings obtained by The New York Times, she became pregnant after being convicted in January.

Holmes and her husband Billy Evans welcomed their first child, William Holmes Evans, in July last year, before her criminal trial began.

Giving birth in prison is no easy feat. Often for the mothers, it means saying goodbye to their child - either for that baby to be put in the care of the government system, or for the mother's partner and/or family to gain sole custody.

In some American prisons, the inmate mothers are allowed to have a doula be present for the birth - helping them physically and emotionally through the process. And according to Frontline, fewer than a dozen of the 50 American states have prison nurseries where babies can stay. The standard of care throughout the entire birth process has also been reported as below adequate standards - both in America and across the world.

As one former female inmate and mother told The Guardian: "The day I went into labour was the most traumatic day of my life. My contractions started at 5:30am and I pressed the cell buzzer to call for urgent help. As the contractions took hold, I called again, and again, but nobody came for two hours. I was terrified I would give birth to my baby on the cell floor."

Holmes is yet to publicly comment or release a statement regarding her sentence, or the fact she is pregnant. 

On Friday, prosecutors asked for a 15-year prison term, as well as a lengthy probation after her release. Holmes' probation officer pushed for a nine-year term, while her defence team asked for a sentence of just 18 months behind bars. In total, Holmes was sentenced to 135 months in prison, as well as three years of supervised release.

Watch: Elizabeth Holmes ahead of the sentencing. Post continues below.

The sentencing wraps up a years-long saga that has been well documented in news stories, documentaries and television series about the Stanford University dropout who became a celebrity entrepreneur after creating a 'revolutionary' product that didn't actually work.

Ahead of the sentencing decision, Holmes addressed the courtroom in tears, apologising to victims and investors, taking full responsibility for Theranos.

"I am devastated by my failings," Holmes said. "Looking back there are so many things I'd do differently if I had the chance. I tried to realise my dream too quickly."

The rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes.

Holmes rose to Silicon Valley fame after founding Theranos in 2003. Wealthy private investors including media mogul Rupert Murdoch invested millions in the company after meeting with her. 

In a nutshell, the 38-year-old created a company based on a blood-testing device that didn’t work like she said it did, and in the process, she ripped off millions of dollars from hundreds of investors, including some of the wealthiest people in the world. 

Holmes stood trial in San Jose, California, and pleaded not guilty to the 11 fraud-related charges brought against her. 

In January, a US jury found her guilty of conspiring to defraud investors and was convicted on four of 11 counts. Holmes was acquitted on four counts and the jury could not reach a decision on three counts.

Prosecutors said Holmes swindled private investors between 2010 and 2015 by convincing them Theranos' small machines could run a range of tests with a few drops of blood from a finger prick.

Holmes was also charged with misleading patients about the accuracy of the tests.

There is, of course, far more to the story. And countless investigative news stories, podcasts and documentaries have uncovered the many details of this fascinating case.

Listen to The Quicky unpack Elizabeth Holmes' crimes. Post continues after audio.

Some of the revelations uncovered since 2015 - when a series of investigations interrogated Theranos' claims - have been disturbing, like the lengths Holmes and her co-accused Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani went to covering up the company's failure. Others have been downright strange.

Here are just some of the weirdest details we've learned about Elizabeth Holmes, the woman once hailed a tech visionary. 

Holmes lowered her voice to be taken more seriously.

If you've watched a video or listened to an interview with Elizabeth Holmes speaking, you'll likely be struck by her baritone voice. It doesn't seem to suit her. And now, we've learned, that’s because it's not her "real" voice.

The disgraced tech entrepreneur's natural speaking voice is much higher, and she trained herself to lower it by several octaves, according to the HBO documentary, The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.

Fraud so good she believed her own lies.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley premieres tonight. pic.twitter.com/3EBmWIcLoX

— HBO (@HBO) March 18, 2019

Why? Well, she wanted to be taken more seriously in a male-dominated tech industry, which some would say is fair enough. She was, after all, 19 when she started Theranos.

Holmes and her Chief Operation Officer kept their romantic relationship a secret.

Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos' Chief Operation Officer (COO) Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani met when she was 18 and graduating high school and he was in his late 30s.

That age difference seems to be part of the reason no one outside, and often inside, the company suspected they were in a romantic relationship. 

U.S. files criminal charges against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and No. 2 Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani https://t.co/a5buw8RnBD

— John Carreyrou (@JohnCarreyrou) June 15, 2018

According to Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup author John Carreyrou, the pair actively hid their relationship from investors and board members.

They only confirmed the relationship, which went on “for a long period of time”, in deposition tapes that were published in January 2019, also confirming they didn’t tell investors.

The couple are no longer together. In mid-2019, Holmes secretly married William "Billy" Evans, a young hospitality heir, who also works in tech. And in July 2021, they welcomed their first child together, William. And as noted, they're now expecting a second child together.

Balwani has pleaded not guilty and will be tried at a later date.

Image: Getty. Holmes claimed her dog was a wolf.

In recent years, it's emerged that Holmes' lies extended far beyond what her blood-testing machine, Edison, could do with just a drop of blood.

Perhaps the oddest of these lies was that her pet Siberian husky was actually a wolf.

According to Vanity Fair, as Holmes' company faced serious trouble in 2017, she jetted off to Alaska and bought a nine-week-old Siberian puppy she named Balto.

She at first claimed the dog, that she regularly brought into the Theranos office, despite hygiene concerns, "had a tiny trace of wolf origin". But then she just started referring to her dog as "wolf".

Holmes was obsessed with Steve Jobs – but she tried to hide copying his outfit.

Holmes regularly quoted Steve Jobs and made it known he was one of her idols and inspirations.

But when it came to the trademark black turtleneck she wore - just like Steve Jobs - she tried to hide that dressing like her idol had been her motivation for her work wardrobe.

In a 2015 interview with Glamour magazine she claimed, "My mum had me in black turtlenecks when I was, like, eight. I probably have 150 of these."

However, product designer Ana Arriola, claims on podcast The Dropout that Holmes actually dressed in "frumpy" jumpers before Arriola mentioned one day that Jobs wore black turtlenecks made by Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

Lo-and-behold, Holmes started wearing Issey Miyake turtlenecks as well.

Image: Getty. Holmes did this...

A scene in HBO documentary The Inventor will probably change the way any viewer listens to MC Hammer's U Can’t Touch This. 

Walking into a meeting to celebrate the fact Edison had been approved by the FDA to test for herpes, the song played and Holmes danced along.

It was... weird. But weirder still was the next moment, when she asked the clapping crowd: "So what do you guys think about the FDA clearance?"

And the crowd chanted back "F*** you" to the "guys who are after us".

It's the perfect illustration of why the organisation had been regularly compared to a cult.

At the HBO premiere of #theinventor: a profile of Theranos brought alive by access to over 100 hours of footage from inside the company: from dancing to celebrate a kind of small FDA approval to Elizabeth Holmes on a bouncy castle. pic.twitter.com/ULWmJyOb4H

— Hannah Kuchler (@hannahkuchler) March 12, 2019

The man who's followed Holmes' case the closest thinks she's a sociopath.

Bad Blood author John Carreyrou, who played a huge role in exposing Theranos as a fake, thinks that Elizabeth Holmes may just be a "sociopath", which is defined simply as a person without empathy.

"When you've told that many lies over such a long period of time, and once the consequences of those lies are exposed, you're unable to recognise you’ve done anything wrong," he told Vox in a 2018 interview.

"And you're conveniently blocking out the fact you may have done real harm to people with these faulty blood tests — to the point of digging your heels in and continuing to burn investor money on lawyers.

He said he thought anyone with a "moral compass" would have admitted their wrongdoing when Carreyrou's Wall Street Journal story first accused the company of fraud in 2015.

"Someone who is not a sociopath would say, 'Whoa, this has gone off the rails. I should publicly apologise, do everything I can to make things right and return the money I still have in the bank to shareholders'."

This article was originally published on January 4, 2022, and was updated on November 21, 2022 with new information.

Feature Image: Getty.