Judges hear Elizabeth Holmes' appeal of fraud conviction while she remains in Texas prison

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A panel of federal judges spent two hours on Tuesday wrestling with a series of legal issues raised in an attempt to overturn a fraud conviction that sent Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes to prison after a meteoric rise to Silicon Valley stardom.

The hearing held in the San Francisco appeals greed and hubris court came nearly two-and-half years after a jury convicted Holmes for orchestrating a blood-testing scam that became a parable about greed and hubris in Silicon Valley. Holmes' instrument of deception was Theranos, a Palo Alto, California, startup that she founded shortly after dropping out of Stanford University in 2003 with her sights set on revolutionizing the health-care industry.

Holmes, who did not attend the hearing, is currently serving an 11-year sentence in a Bryan, Texas prison.

But Holmes' parents and her partner — the father of her two young children — Billy Evans sat in the front row of the courtroom listening intently to the oral arguments. All three federal prosecutors who presented the U.S Justice Department's case during the original four-month trial were sitting in the courtroom audience, including two attorneys — Jeffrey Schenk and John Bostic — who have since gone to work for private law firms.