Former Theranos exec Sunny Balwani sentenced to 13 years in prison

Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, the former Theranos president and top deputy of disgraced founder Elizabeth Holmes, has been sentenced to 13 years behind bars.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila handed down the 155-month prison term in a San Jose, California, federal courthouse on Wednesday. 

Balwani, like Holmes, had faced as many as 20 years in federal detention for his role in a yearslong scheme duping investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars on false claims that Holmes had developed a revolutionary blood-testing technology.

The co-defendants and former lovers were indicted on criminal fraud charges in 2018, but were tried separately in trials both overseen by Davila.

Holmes was convicted in January of one charge of conspiracy and three charges of fraud for her role in the scam. The former Silicon Valley darling was originally accused of 11 charges, acquitted of four, and a jury could not reach a verdict on three of them. She was sentenced last month to 11.25 years in prison.

Balwani was found guilty in June on all 12 criminal fraud charges against him. He did not speak in his own defense during his trial nor at his sentencing, where his attorneys portrayed him as a benevolent investor who became wrapped up in Holmes' scheme, pointing out that he poured $15 million of his funds into the startup.

During his sentencing, Balwani's attorneys argued he should not be on the hook for investor losses because he left Theranos in 2016 before the losses occurred, and noted he was one of those investors, too.

But prosecutors painted the former chief operating officer as an active participant in the fraud, and Holmes blamed Balwani for the scam when she took the stand in her own trial. She claimed he misled her about the effectiveness of Theranos' technology, and further accused him of emotional and sexual abuse, all of which he denied.

Prosecutors recommended 15-year sentences each for Balwani and Holmes, while probation reports asked for nine years apiece. The co-conspirators' separate defense teams each asked the judge for their respective clients to serve no time at all.

Davila determined an identical range of sentencing for both of them under federal guidelines, calculating between 11.25 and 14 years.

Holmes and Balwani both maintained their innocence throughout their court proceedings. Davila denied each of them in their separate requests for new trials.