Earlier Theranos CEO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was found guilty on Thursday of defrauding investors and patients of the blood testing company.
Balwani, who served as COO and president of Theranos, was convicted of all 12 charges he faced, including ten counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The company’s former CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, who was also Balwani’s ex-girlfriend, was… convicted in January of conspiracy to defraud investors and three counts of wire fraud, though the jury found her not guilty of four other charges of fraud related to patients who had used Theranos’ tests. Jurors were unable to reach a verdict on three cases of defrauding specific investors.
Holmes and Balwani were initially charged together, but their cases were separated after Holmes alleged that Balwani had abused her. He denied those claims, arguing that she was responsible for the problems in Theranos during his trial.
Both Balwani and Holmes could face up to 20 years in prison, although she has already asked a judge to… overturn her beliefs. Holmes is due to appear in court in September.
Theranos was launched in 2003 and impressed huge amounts of investor dollars. But the vision to disrupt healthcare with a full suite of lab tests performed on a few drops of blood began to unravel in 2015 when the Wall Street Journals John Carreyrou started a series of research papers on the problems with the company’s technology. The company officially closed down in 2018.
