No matter what the jury’s decision in Elizabeth Holmes’ federal criminal trial this year, the fall of Theranos has become a massively expensive proposition for the Stanford University dropout.
With nine lawyers representing her on two fronts, her legal bills are mounting. In addition to a possible 20-year prison sentence, she’s facing up to $2.75 million in fines and possible restitution to investors the government says lost $700 million. And the federal government has said that if she’s found guilty, it will go after any ill-gotten money or assets she may have.

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“There’s the sense that this is a fraud that put people in physical danger because Theranos was pretending to have a technology that it didn’t really have,” said Stanford Law School professor David Sklansky. “That distinguishes it from most fraud cases where we’re talking about people losing money. It could affect if there’s a fine. It could affect the size of a fine. It certainly could affect the length of any prison sentence.”

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Federal investigators almost certainly have already been searching for any money and assets Holmes may have, Stanford’s Sklansky said.

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Any future moves Holmes might make to resurrect her career and finances may be limited by the SEC settlement, which bans her from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years. But ultimately, if she is convicted, the goal of the justice system is not to leave those found guilty of crimes in ruins, Sklansky said.

“There have been famously wealthy people who have been convicted of crimes and who have managed to serve their sentence, pay their fines and still move forward with a fair amount of wealth,” Sklansky said. “It’s hard to generalize about how ruinous a legal case winds up being for a particular defendant. There’s no rule in the legal system that if you start off rich you should be able to be rich when you leave your case.”

Holmes’s education, connections and work experience would likely help her get back on her feet if she is convicted, Sklansky said. “Anybody who enters the criminal process from a position of advantage has all kinds of advantages that most criminal defendants don’t have in terms of recovering from the process and any punishment that they suffer,” Sklansky said.