The former chief operating officer of a blood testing startup was found guilty of conspiracy and fraud in July.
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former CEO of Theranos and partner of disgraced businesswoman Elizabeth Holmes, has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for defrauding investors and patients.
Balwani, 57, was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years and 11 months in prison after pleading guilty in July to two counts of conspiracy and 10 counts of fraud in connection with a blood test study that Theranos said was fraudulent.
US District Judge Edward Davila postponed a ruling on prosecutors’ request that Mr Balwani be ordered to pay $804m in restitution – the same amount Holmes had sought – for a later hearing.
Balwani’s sentence comes less than a month after Theranos founder and former CEO Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for his role in the scandal, which highlighted the pitfalls of Silicon Valley’s culture of ambition and unbridled competition.
Balwani, who dated Holmes until 2016, was jailed for 20 years.
Prosecutors wanted Balwani, the former chief operating officer and president of Theranos, to serve 15 years in prison, saying he gave “a false narrative about Theranos’ technology and financial stability on a day-to-day basis during meetings.”
Balwani’s lawyers, who argued that the Indian-born businessman was not motivated by greed or fame and suffered greatly because of the Theranos news, had asked for four to 10 months.
Theranos, founded in 2003 by Holmes when he was 19, said it developed a new blood test system that enabled patients to perform more than 200 blood tests with a blood pinprick.
Instead, the company secretly used traditional testing methods and gave patients false results.
Theranos, which was once valued at $10bn and was backed by famous investors including former US Treasury Secretary George Schultz and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, was widely hailed as a Silicon Valley success story, Holmes compared to Steve Jobs.
Its downfall, which has been documented in books, articles and successful TV shows, began in 2015 when scientists and several reports in the Wall Street Journal questioned the company’s claims.
