(DENVER) — The FBI is warning the public against using charging stations in malls and at airports, according to a tweet from the bureau’s Denver office.

The public charging stations could be a conduit for bad actors to introduce malware onto personal devices, officials warn.

“Avoid using free charging stations in airports, hotels or shopping centers,” the FBI Denver said. “Bad actors have figured out ways to use public USB ports to introduce malware and monitoring software onto devices. Carry your own charger and USB cord and use an electrical outlet instead.”

The FBI didn’t respond to ABC News’ request for comment on whether there has been a rise in malicious activity related to the cyber-theft tactic known as “juice jacking.”

Javed Ali, the former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, told ABC News that the information tweet was likely “informed by an FBI-driven investigation or other intelligence that has now been approved for public release.”

“The tweet’s message that public USB ports have been used by “bad actors” as points of origin to load malware or spyware on electronic devices connected to those public charging stations suggests a fairly high level of technical capability in order to carry out these operations,” Ali, now an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy said.

A 2021 alert posted by the Federal Communications Commission warned that using a public charger could lead to malicious software on a device without the user’s knowledge.

“Cybersecurity experts have warned that criminals can load malware onto public USB charging stations to maliciously access electronic devices while they are being charged,” the alert, initially posted around the holiday season warned. “Malware installed through a dirty USB port can lock a device or export personal data and passwords directly to the perpetrator. Criminals can use that information to access online accounts or sell it to other bad actors.”

While officials did not offer statistics about the prevalence of juice jacking, people have increasingly suffered from cyber-theft in recent years. Americans lost $10.3 billion to a wide variety of internet scams last year, according to an FBI report released last month.

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge has denied an effort by disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes to delay the start of her prison sentence, set to begin later this month, while she awaits an appeal ruling.

Holmes does not pose a flight risk but she failed to raise a “‘substantial question of law or fact’ that is ‘likely to result in a reversal or an order for a new trial on all counts,'” Edward Davila, the district court judge who presided over her trial, wrote in the decision.

The prison sentence for Holmes is set to begin on April 27.

Davila rejected a similar delay request last month from Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former romantic partner of Holmes as well as chief operating officer and president of Theranos, who was originally set to enter incarceration on March 16 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Balwani faces a nearly 13-year sentence after being convicted of 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy. An appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals kept Balwani from surrendering in March but that appeal has since been denied and Balwani must report to California’s Terminal Island prison on April 20. Balwani had requested and was granted a change in prison location.

In November, Holmes was sentenced to 135 months, or 11 1/4 years, in prison. The sentence falls short of the maximum possible punishment for Holmes, who faced as many as 20 years in prison.

Holmes was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release after the sentence.

In her motion to remain out of prison until an appeal ruling, Holmes challenged court findings regarding the accuracy and reliability of Theranos’ blood testing machines, as well as the court’s refusal to admit previous testimony from Balwani that he held primary responsibility for financial model estimates shown to prospective investors, among other claims.

Davila ruled that such challenges, even if granted, were unlikely to result in a reversal of the conviction or a new trial.

Holmes, 38, was convicted last January on four counts of investor fraud and conspiracy while at the helm of Theranos.

The verdict followed a four-month trial that detailed Holmes’ trajectory from a Stanford University dropout in 2003 to a star business leader on the cover of Fortune magazine a little more than a decade later.

Ultimately, her downfall began in 2015 amid investigations from journalists and regulators over the medical company’s faulty product, which claimed to provide accurate information from tests using just a few drops of blood.

A year later, as the company struggled, Forbes downgraded its assessment of Holmes’ net worth from $4.5 billion to $0.

Facing charges of massive fraud from the Securities and Exchange Commission, Holmes agreed to forfeit control of Theranos in 2018.

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