The prosecutor behind Elizabeth Holmes’ guilty verdict said the entrepreneur’s fall from Silicon Valley’s cover girl to a felon serves as a cautionary tale. 

Former federal prosecutor John Bostic played a pivotal role in putting Holmes behind bars and is cautioning other entrepreneurs against following the lead of the Theranos founder’s disgraced career. 

“The economy benefits from an active ecosystem of tech startups and investors,” Bostic, who now works as a partner at the global law firm Cooley, told Fox News Digital. 

“Investors need to approach even the most hyped investments with a dose of skepticism, and founders need to be vigilant in painting an accurate picture of their companies. That goes double in highly regulated industries like life sciences.”

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Holmes swindled investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars by falsely claiming her company had invented a device that could run complex medical tests with just a single drop of blood.

In November 2022, Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being convicted of fraud and conspiracy and was ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to her victims. 

“There are things I would have done differently,” Holmes, 41, said in an interview with People. “I refused to plead guilty to crimes I did not commit. Theranos failed. But failure is not fraud.”

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Despite her conviction, Holmes maintains she is innocent and was not influenced by greed, which Bostic said is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. 

“A fraud case almost always comes down to a defendant’s intent,” Bostic said. “Even if the evidence shows that a defendant said something untrue, the prosecution’s job is only half done. They still need to prove that the defendant actually intended to deceive and cheat someone.”

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes arrives at a federal courthouse accompanied by partner Billy Evans, in San Jose, Calif., March 17, 2023. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)

Holmes’ trial revealed that while Theranos was not a sham, her claims were. 

“The jury heard from multiple investors who gave similar accounts of how the false things they heard from Holmes persuaded them to invest,” Bostic told Fox News Digital. “And, critically, former employees testified about the true situation at Theranos and what Holmes knew.”

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court upheld Holmes’s conviction, dashing her hopes of being released from prison. Holmes and former business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani claimed legal errors were made during their trials after the court allowed some witness testimony but denied others. 

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Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., arrives at Federal Prison Camp Bryan in Bryan, Texas, May 30, 2023. (Sergio Flores/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

While in prison, the mother of two is permitted to visit with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two children, Holmes said. She gave birth to her oldest child shortly before her trial began and delivered her second child three months before her prison sentence began. 

“I always wanted to be a mother,” Holmes told People. “I truly did not think I would ever be convicted or found guilty.” 

Holmes is being held at Federal Prison Camp Byran in Bryan, Texas, and is scheduled to be released March 19, 2032. Upon release, she hopes to continue working in the healthcare and technology industries. 

“It kills me to put my family through pain the way I do,” Holmes said. “But when I look back on my life, and these angels that have come into it, I can get through anything. It makes me want to fight for all of it.”

Mollie Markowitz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A multi-agency, weeklong immigration crackdown in the Houston area this month resulted in the arrest of 646 illegal aliens, including 543 criminal aliens and seven documented gang members.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said it, along with federal, state and local law enforcement, conducted the operation between Feb. 23 and March 2 in the Houston area to bolster public safety, national security and border security.

ICE and its partners executed 71 criminal arrest warrants and arrested 543 illegal undocumented aliens who had been charged with or convicted of criminal offenses while being illegally in the U.S.

Of the criminal aliens arrested, 140 were charged or convicted of an aggravated felony or violent offense, like homicide, aggravated assault or domestic violence.

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Another 34 criminal aliens have been charged or convicted of a sex offense or child sex offense like aggravated sexual assault of a minor, possession of child pornography, or rape.

ICE noted that 38 of the criminal aliens who were arrested were convicted of illegal firearms offenses like unlawful carrying of a firearm, alien in possession of a firearm, and aggravated assault with a firearm, while another 52 were charged or convicted of offenses like drug trafficking or criminal possession of a controlled substance.

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ICE is conducting flights to remove illegal immigrants from the U.S. and back to their home countries. (ICE Seattle)

Fifty-one criminal aliens were charged with or convicted of property crimes, and 93 were charged with or convicted of driving while intoxicated.

“In recent years, some of the world’s most dangerous fugitives, transnational gang members and criminal aliens have taken advantage of the crisis at our nation’s southern border to illegally enter the U.S.,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said in a statement. “After illegally entering the country, many of these criminal aliens have gone on to commit violent crime and reign terror on law-abiding residents.”

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ICE agents arrested seven illegal immigrants during a separate workforce operation raid. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

Also weighing in on the massive operation was ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Houston Special Agent in Charge Chad Plantz, who said the collective efforts have made the Houston community significantly safer and strengthened the country’s national security and border security.

“In just one week working alongside our counterparts from federal, state and local law enforcement, ICE HSI special agents successfully executed 71 criminal arrest warrants and made 554 administrative arrests that included illegally present human smugglers, gang members, human traffickers, child sex offenders, drug traffickers and weapons traffickers,” Plantz said in a statement. “As a result, we’ve sent a resounding message to transnational criminal organizations everywhere that the law enforcement community in the Texas Gulf Coast is more united than ever and will not rest until we’ve eradicated these criminal elements from the country.”

Along with ICE, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Diplomatic Security Service and the U.S. Marshals Service participated in the operation.