Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, the former president of Theranos, has been found guilty on a dozen fraud-related charges, the Wall Street Journal reports. His conviction comes months after Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of Theranos, was found guilty of four charges of defrauding investors.
Theranos, which was once valued at $9 billion, promised to be able to conduct a range of blood tests using only a finger-prick's worth of blood. But a series of articles in the Journal and investigations by US regulators found that the company was not able to conduct the testing and uncovered irregularities in its testing procedures. Holmes and Balwani were eventually indicted in 2018 on charges of wire fraud. Holmes was convicted of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud but was found not guilty on four counts related to defrauding patients. The jury in that case was unable to reach a verdict on three additional charges.
According to the Journal, Balwani was found guilty on 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He was, unlike Holmes, convicted of charges linked to defrauding patients. It adds that he faces up to 20 years in prison for each count but is likely to serve less time.