Theranos’ Sunny Balwani lands 13-year fraud sentence after ex-partner Elizabeth Holmes gets 11 years

Theranos’ Sunny Balwani lands 13-year fraud sentence after ex-partner Elizabeth Holmes gets 11 years

Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison for the part he played in defrauding investors and patients while helping lead blood testing startup Theranos, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Judge Edward Davila handed down the 155-month sentence—which will be followed by three years of probation—after a hearing that stretched more than four hours, according to Law360’s Dorothy Atkins, who was live tweeting the proceedings from inside the Northern California courtroom. Davila had reportedly narrowed down Balwani’s possible sentence to fall between 11.25 and 14 years based on the $120 million he calculated in investor losses under Balwani’s tenure at Theranos.

Balwani declined to speak in his own defense at the sentencing hearing, Atkins reported. The judge set a surrender date for March 15.

Balwani served as president and chief operating officer of Theranos from 2009 until 2016, two years before its dissolution. Throughout his time at the startup—and for several years before—he carried on a semi-secret romantic relationship with its CEO and founder, Elizabeth Holmes.

Last month, Holmes was sentenced to 11.25 years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Her surrender date is set for April 27, allowing her time to give birth to her second child with partner Billy Evans. Davila, who also oversaw Holmes’ case, suggested that she be incarcerated in a minimum-security women’s “prison camp” in Texas, Bloomberg reported last month.

In the days leading up to Balwani’s sentencing hearing, his attorneys filed a request for a light sentence of just four to 10 months, preferably to be served in his own home. Prosecutors for the U.S. Department of Justice countered with a 15-year suggested sentence, while a federal probation officer recommended nine years—the same terms that both federal players proposed for Holmes’ sentencing.

Both Balwani and Holmes had been charged with a dozen criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. They each faced maximum sentences of 20 years in prison and fines of $250,000 plus restitution for each of Holmes’ four and Balwani’s 12 convicted counts.

The charges were based on claims that Balwani and Holmes had knowingly exaggerated the abilities of Theranos’ technology—to the tune of about $1 billion in investor cash and a handful of high-profile partnerships that, among others, placed the blood testing devices in Walgreens and Safeway clinics.

The duo sold investors and partners on the idea that their company’s countertop machines could run dozens of diagnostic tests using just a few drops of blood. It seemed too good to be true, and, in fact, it was: Theranos was eventually found to be secretly running tests on modified Siemens analyzers rather than its own faulty Edison and MiniLab devices.

Though charged together, Balwani and Holmes’ trials were ultimately separated after Holmes’ legal team disclosed it would be accusing Balwani of emotional and physical abuse throughout the pair’s romance. He has denied all allegations of abuse.

Each of the trials stretched about four months from jury selection to verdict. While Holmes was found guilty in January on only four counts—all of which concerned defrauding investors—Balwani’s trial ended in July with 12 of 12 guilty counts, including those related to defrauding patients.

In hers, Holmes’ attorneys cast her as a naïve and inexperienced CEO who exaggerated Theranos’ abilities out of idealism, rather than a knowing attempt to commit fraud, while painting her ex-partner as a scheming mastermind who held a dangerous amount of sway over her actions. In his own trial, Balwani’s legal team argued that he had merely been swept up by and gamely went along with Holmes’ revolutionary vision for the company and technology.

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