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Comment by Snoo7654 | Hacker News Reader

She should have fled the country while she had the chance

Wasn't there a story that she was waiting out of jail and booked a flight without return and was immediately arrested?

"Elizabeth Holmes Booked A One-Way Flight To Mexico After Fraud Conviction, Prosecutors Say" - https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/01/20/eliza...

Look, this story is stupid. It was a 3-leg trip she speculatively booked while appealing her sentence. If she was genuinely trying to flee the country, she would not have booked a 1-way flight months ahead of time.

She can afford a round trip ticket, bought at the airport on the day of departure. Or fled across the Mexico border. Or smuggled herself out on a boat. There are SO MANY ways to flee the country that are not shouting "HEY FYI TO THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT — I'M LEAVING FOR A BIT".

Or she just panicked when it sank in that yes she really would end up in prison.

Facing 11 years of it after being a part of the 1% can lead to some pretty human, pretty stupid decisions.

She isn't some hardened street criminal with a "Go bag".

She’s also likely headed to a min security retreat that has more in common with a sleepaway camp than OITNB

Ah, yes the foolproof "they wouldn't be that stupid" argument.

This story makes me happy that justice works some times.

People in this thread are confusing satisfaction in the justice system for schadenfreude. It’s just nice to see people who have done wrong held accountable.

I'm not confusing anything.

Yet she still wasn't immediately incarcerated.

Here's the quote from the article, which is very short:

> Prosecutors had attempted to argue that Holmes did pose a flight risk, revealing that her partner had bought her a one-way flight to Mexico shortly before the verdict was returned. While Davila called the travel plans a “bold move” and Holmes’s failure to cancel the ticket post-conviction a “perilously careless oversight”, he accepted her assertion that she was not trying to flee the country.

Maybe I'm not the kind of risk taker that steals a billion dollars, but 11 years playing golf with Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff at Club Fed sounds vastly preferable to being on the run for your entire life.

Even getting into a country that doesn't have an extradition treaty isn't going to help you. An extradition treaty is just a streamlined process for extraditing criminals - unless you're a natural citizen, or there's a particular geopolitical reason (Snowden), there's ~zero reason for why your host country won't make a one-off exemption for you.

>Maybe I'm not the kind of risk taker that steals a billion dollars, but 11 years playing golf with Martha Stewart and Bernie Madoff at Club Fed sounds vastly preferable to being on the run for your entire life.

Except Martha Stewart was released from prison 18 years ago[0], Bernie Madoff is male, so is in a men's prison and those with Federal prison sentences of ten years or longer are not eligible for minimum security (or "club fed", as you put it) facilities[1]. As such, she will likely serve her sentence in a "low security" facility rather than a "minimum security" facility[2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart

[1] I searched around and couldn't find the specific rules. However, I posted here (several years ago, not going to go through a few hundred pages of posting history to find it. Sorry.) about wanting to commit a non-violent, Federal felony and receive a long Federal prison sentence in a minimum security ("club fed") facility as a retirement strategy on a par with Medicaid funded assisted living facilities. The former not requiring you to spend all your assets (okay, you can keep $2000) to be eligible. I was informed, with links that sentences of ten years or more are not eligible for Federal minimum security facilities.

> The former not requiring you to spend all your assets (okay, you can keep $2000)

Medicaid is a state-federal program, and states may have higher asset limits (Californa, for instance, raised it from the federal baseline $2000 individual/$3000 married couple to $130,000 + $65,000 for additional family member.)

>Medicaid is a state-federal program, and states may have higher asset limits (Californa, for instance, raised it from the federal baseline $2000 individual/$3000 married couple to $130,000 + $65,000 for additional family member.)

I was unaware that there was variation by state. Thanks for sharing that!

I'm well aware of Martha Stewart's current status as an ex-con, and that Bernie Madoff died two years ago.

Either way, while Mrs. Holmes won't quite have an 18-hole golf course at her new digs, my point still stands. She'll be out before she's 50.

Sorry for the late reply.

So you think Holmes got off too lightly, yes?

Maybe she did. I don't know.

Eleven years is a pretty long time, especially if you're in a crowded place without the ability to leave.

What would you suggest instead? Put her in a male supermax prison and let the inmates have at her? Or just put two bullets in the back of her head?

Either way, it's no skin off my nose. Although, TBH I think an extended supermax prison-wide gang rape might be overkill.

But I'd be fine with two in the back of the head.

> 11 years playing golf

Not quite sure there's a golf course there. Here's an overview of the same jail a "real housewives of salt lake city" is in.

https://www.the-sun.com/entertainment/7141761/jen-shahs-pris...

"It’s unclear why Shah asked to serve at that specific prison but People says other notable inmates who have been sent to the Bryan camp have included Hidalgo County, Texas, Commissioner Sylvia Handy; Jenna Ryan, who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack; and Lea Fastow, a former assistant treasurer at Enron."

https://www.kbtx.com/2023/01/08/reality-tv-star-wants-serve-...

I wonder if the buildings have A/C. Summer in Texas can be pretty hot

Being on the run is not exactly the same thing as living in some 10 million dollar mansion in some non-extradition country.

What would the feds be willing to pay for her? Snowden got asylum so some minor power could piss off and show up a geo-political rival. She would just gift 1 million dollars to some king who would just claim that she was not in his county when America came asking for her extradition.

Where would you even go? Who‘d even want you? Russia? A life in either one of the few countries that doesn‘t do extraditions to the USA or staying in hiding, always afraid, sounds miserable.

Sure, but compared to jail? I could imaging preferring living in a small cabin off the grid in some remote place as an alternative. She obviously deserves it, but in the hypothetical case the alternatives don’t seem all that terrible.

Prison for 11 years, realistically prison for 5 years and then a supervised release. It's not the end of the world. And she will still be able to see her kids by doing this.

Holmes was charged with a federal crime and there is currently no parole for federal crimes. [0] She will do almost all of the 11 years. There is a good conduct reduction, which caps out at 54 days a year, so it's possible she could get out in 9 1/2 years. [1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_parole_in_the_United_S... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_conduct_time#:~:text=Good....

Doesn't need to be parole. It could be home confinement under the CARES act.

Michael Conahan from kids for cash was sentenced to 17.5 years and only served 10 before being allowed to go to home confinement - I'm sure Elizabeth can find a way.

It's a federal sentence so she will be doing most of the time assigned. Each year of good behavior gets up to 47* days taken off the prisoner's sentence. IIRC, these are awarded at the end of each year in prison, so you can't just calculate 11*47 to get the reduction as if she behaves, she'll only be in nine and a partial year. She'll miss out on those last two years of sentence reductions.

* The law says 54 but in practice it's 47.

No, Federal prisons aren't subject to parole or supervised release. There are limited credits for good behavior that max out at 15% of her sentence so the best possible outcome for her is serving 9 years and 7 months of her 135 month sentence. She won't be out of prison before 2033.

I guess living in a weird, alien place til death with your stolen millions is better than 16 years in prison.

France? Or even Israel also (doesn't deport for financial crimes), though I don't know her background.

Do they not deport foreigners who try to flee justice or is she a citizen in either country.

Both are allies of the US and even though France is from time to time prone to do some diplomatic PR stunts they don't exactly love her kind of fraud.

Israels government is currently busy with internal politics and America can lean very heavily on them.

Her only realistic option would be someplace that doesn't like America and is big enough to not be worth the effort of pressuring them.

And they would need to be willing to take in someone who defrauded patients for profit. Not quite eye to eye with someone like snowden

If you have no morals and sufficient money I imagine life in Russia (or a number of other places) could be reasonably pleasant.

Does she even have any considerable assets? Fleeing the country and living like a queen in Bahrain is totally different from fleeing the country and needing to work for a living still.

Her baby daddy's family owns a luxury hotel chain, so presumably she wouldn't have to work.

https://www.evanshotels.com/

She might have even thought that she even had the clout and the skills (getting pregnant) to even defeat the justice system though.

Given what she did manage, who could blame her for thinking this?

That's a line of thought I often see but... In the end all she did manage was to land herself in jail for 11 years. That's not "genius". Not even smart. That's just plain dumb. To win a stupid prize, it takes a stupid person to play a stupid game.

And I cannot wait to see the stupid prize that "altruistic genius" SBF gets.

Agreed, but not only stupid, she has some kind of sociopathic disorder which is what's causing all this chaos. And the pretty disgraceful idea to bring lives into the world that would depend on her to try and get herself out of it. I can't help but see her having children as yet another calculated, cynical and nutty move on her part.

She is too famous and/or isn't rich enough to do this.

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