Former Theranos President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was sentenced on Wednesday to nearly 13 years in prison for his involvement in a scheme to defraud investors and patients of the blood testing startup led by Elizabeth Holmes.
US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, imposed the sentence of 12 years and 11 months on Balwani, who was found guilty in July of 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Both Balwani and Holmes were charged with defrauding investors of Theranos. The two were accused of working together to obfuscate and manipulate tests from the company’s machine, called the Edison. Theranos was once valued at more than $9 billion but was shut down in 2018 following investigations into the fraudulent practices.
Davila sentenced Holmes in November to 11 years and three months in prison after the disgraced founder of the blood testing startup was found guilty of four counts of defrauding Theranos investors. In the middle of the last decade, Holmes received huge attention and was touted as “the next Steve Jobs” before the company’s supposedly revolutionary and disruptive technology was shown to be unreliable.
The Theranos saga has been the source of podcasts, a documentary and a Hulu TV series.
