A perverse culture of presumed lawlessness has migrated from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. You see it, here, when top-voted comments scoff at the notion of a perpetrator getting jail time. Hopefully, these sentences result in people being less cavalier about criminality. (Andreessen pivoting back to pumping web3 tempers my hope.)
Holmes, Madoff etc... are all the proof that you need that the only people who go to Jail for fraud are the ones whose fraud hurts specifically investors.
If you steal more than $5K three times in California, you will get 25 years in prison [1], and while I think that's disgusting and detestable, I don't want any elites getting special treatment either, so as to force change in those sentencing guidelines.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.kannlawoffice.com/grand-theft.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.kannlawoffice.com/grand-theft.html</a>
The Bureau of Prisons will designate where she goes, and unless there's some prevailing medical reason (unlikely), or other reasons involving cooperation, request, security threats, access to particular religious facilities, or a repeat stay, my understanding is they're constrained by statute to pick a reasonable distance from home (that might be only X years from release date though).<p>The women's FCI in Dublin, California is an easy drive and they (presumably) have her level of security. If she wants to say F California (maybe she did in her PSR) then maybe Bryan TX is her destination. Could also be some random third facility. I don't think if a flight risk to Mexico is a concern that they'd be sending her so close to Mexico, but it may upgrade her security level enough that Dublin's off the table.<p>It's all time and it all sucks. Her kids will get to see her if their father wants them to, perhaps every weekend.
One of the questions I have about any fraudster is where they fall on the goof/sociopath spectrum. It's surprisingly easy to start a Ponzi scheme by accident, after all. You just offer investors good returns (legal), be too optimistic about how it will go (legal), and then give them the promised returns anyhow by using other investor money (very illegal). I suspect a number of companies even get away with it, as they get in the black fast enough to be able to cover things up. But a lot of the people who get caught look to be eager-to-please fuckups, not calculating criminals.<p>But if I ever had any question about Holmes, it was richly answered for me by her having not one but two children while under indictment for crimes that yielded an 11-year sentence. I cannot imagine the kind of person who has kids knowing there were good odds they'd have to abandon them for much of their childhood.
Any bets she actually reports? Odds anyone? I feel a woman of her means and personality may try to disappear, go off grid. Does she still have access to money? Were her assets frozen?
Now that the ruling has landed, it's clear she's going to prison, and her born and unborn kids have outlasted their purpose, I'm sure she's going to ship them off to whatever outsourced child supervision service she's procured for that purpose. As long as the price was good.
I doubt she ever see a day behind bars. Like Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. You would think guy is in prison; meanwhile both Wiki and some other pretty decent sources clearly state "free on $500,000 bail".
Squeezing in a couple pregnancies while faced with spending her remaining childbearing years in prison adds to the drama and sadness here. What a lady.
I don’t know why but in my own perverse way, I can sometimes root for her, even still. Maybe I just see her as a cartoon/movie villain (we will sometimes root for them)—- I somehow don’t accept her a real person.
Good, her children will be better off not being raised by a felon mother. The father's family has plenty of money, the kids will be well cared for without her around. With luck the father will find a new mother for the kids and they'll forget about Holmes.
I have a really hard time believing that non-violent crimes should result in a person being locked in a cage. I'd rather see restrictions that limit their ability to do more damage, like when a reckless driver gets their license revoked. Besides, a free person with a job can pay back their debt to society, literally, with money, instead of the rest of us paying their living costs.<p>EDIT: As comments point out, it is arguable that the crimes in question are violent because they directly jeopardized people's health.
I don't think she, or other non-violent criminals, should be in prison. There are much more affordable and constructive ways to handle this. This isn't rehabilitation or justice, only punishment.