This is the punishment for the massive fraud committed by Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani against patients and investors, US federal judge Edward Davila said on Wednesday (local time). At 155 months in prison, Balwani received a higher sentence than Holmes.
The charismatic founder of Theranos was sentenced to 11 years in prison last month; she has since appealed.
In the separate trial of Balwani, the federal prosecutor’s office in San Jose argued that the 57-year-old and Holmes, who was about 20 years his junior, had run Theranos together. They were therefore “partners in everything, including their crime”.
Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 when he was just 19 years old. The company promoted a supposedly revolutionary technology for particularly fast, effective and cheap blood tests. Theranos made Holmes a billionaire and for years the charismatic young entrepreneur was celebrated as a technology pioneer.
(SDA)