Convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes appeared to post a kissy-face selfie on Sunday, despite still being incarcerated.
The image showed the 42-year-old wearing full makeup, a black-and-white tank top and a snake-shaped ring as she blew a kiss toward the camera.
“The answer to every challenge lies in your heart,” the accompanying message said.
By Monday night, the post had drawn more than 12 million views. Numerous users replied to Holmes’ account, which appeared to answer several of them.
In response to one X user, the account said the snake ring came “from a Taylor Swift merch stand.” After another commenter wrote that Holmes had not “changed at all,” the account responded: “True. But I don’t think that’s the insult you meant it to be.”
Asked by another user “wya”—short for “where you at?”—the account seemingly replied, “Bryan Federal Prison Camp.” Holmes is serving an 11-year sentence there after being found guilty of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.
A later post clarified that the kissy-face image was actually taken in 2019. Holmes does not have internet access at the federal prison, according to the follow-up.
Her account is instead being run by her fiancée Billy Evans, according to NPR.
Convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes appeared to share a photo of herself in makeup and a black-and-white tank top while blowing a kiss
The 42-year-old remains incarcerated at Bryan Federal Prison Camp, where she is serving an 11-year sentence for defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars
The apparent social media activity comes shortly before the release of a secret documentary in which Holmes spoke with Nathan Fielder days before reporting to prison.
Holmes was convicted in 2022 on four fraud counts after raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors by misrepresenting the capabilities of her healthcare startup’s technology.
The company claimed its system could perform hundreds of blood tests from a single finger-prick sample. Investigations by The Wall Street Journal later helped expose the claims as fraudulent.
For years, speculation persisted that Fielder had interviewed Holmes, although the documentary remained tightly concealed from the public.
Before the film was screened at the Telluride Film Festival’s Herzog Theatre, attendees were required to surrender their cellphones.
After details of the closely guarded project finally emerged, an unsettling trailer was released.
In it, Fielder and Holmes are seen facing each other for roughly a minute as they discuss whether she is being genuine while staring deeply into each other’s eyes.
‘I don’t have anything to deceive you on,’ Holmes tells the director.
‘Of course I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you? There’s no reason for me to do that.’
The post comes ahead of the release of a documentary on the disgraced Theranos founder
‘OK. All right. OK, good chat,’ Fielder replies. ‘You’re being real right now?’
‘I’m always being real,’ Holmes answers.
Her X account then reposted the trailer on X, adding that she is ‘always being real.’
In more recent years, Holmes has been making pro-Trump and pro-Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) posts on X in August of 2025, marking a striking shift from the political views and public persona she previously projected on the platform.
Before resuming activity on X, Holmes’s account had been inactive since 2015. At the time, she frequently posted about prominent women including Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Melinda Gates and Margaret Thatcher.
But by November of 2025, her account shared a Politico article about MAHA ’embracing’ her and wrote: ‘I have been working to Make America Healthy Again since 2004.
‘I will continue to dedicate my life to improving healthcare in this beautiful country I call home. I don’t know if MAHA is embracing me, but I support its cause: healthier Americans.’
In 2022, Holmes was convicted on four counts of fraud for raising hundreds of millions of dollars by misleading investors about the technology behind her healthcare startup. She is pictured in prison
According to the US Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, Holmes sought a commutation of her sentence sometime in 2025. On the justice department’s website, her request is listed as pending.
In criminal court, Holmes was convicted of wire fraud totaling more than $140 million and sentenced to a little more than 11 years in prison, according to the Department of Justice.
In civil court, she was charged with defrauding investors out of $700 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Holmes’s posts and her request for a commutation could be viewed as an effort to secure an early release from the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas, after she lost an appeal of her conviction in May.
Her only options for release before December 30, 2031, are now a favorable decision from the Supreme Court in a final appeal, which experts say is unlikely, or a successful clemency plea to the Trump administration.
Holmes’s strategy is not illogical, as Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of dozens of white-collar criminals who were convicted of fraud.
The Department of Justice’s website lists 114 people who were granted clemency by the president since the start of his second term.
Of those who were pardoned or received commuted sentences, 34 were convicted of various kinds of fraud.
