Sunny Balwani, director No. 2 of Theranos, is sentenced for fraud

Ramesh Balwani, the former COO of the failing blood testing startup, was found guilty of 12 fraud charges in July .

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">Ramesh Balwani, the former chief operating officer of failed blood testing startup Theranos, was sentenced on Wednesday to nearly 13 years in prison for defrauding investors and patients about the company's business and technology.

Mr. Balwani, 58, and his convicted co-conspirator Elizabeth Holmes, 38, founder of Theranos, had promised the start-up would revolutionize healthcare with machines and tests that can detect certain diseases using just a few drops of blood. But those claims were false, and Theranos became a tale of Silicon Valley ambition and hype.

Mr. Balwani, also known as Sunny, was convicted in July of 10 counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

US District Judge Edward J. Davila The Northern District of California court sentenced Mr. Balwani to 155 months, or 12 years and 11 months, as well as three years of probation. Mr Balwani is due in police custody on March 15.

His sentence was longer than that of Ms Holmes, who was found guilty of four counts of charged with fraud in January and sentenced last month to more than 11 years in prison. Mr. Balwani plans to appeal. His lawyers requested that he be assigned to a minimum-security satellite camp in Lompoc, California.

While wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, prosecutors had asked that Mr. Balwani be sentenced to 15 years and ordered to pay more than 800 million dollars in compensation to investors. Her lawyers had asked for fair probation.

As they did in Ms. Holmes' case, prosecutors told Judge Davila that a long sentence would discourage Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and start-up founders to stretch the truth. In court filings, they also wrote that a long sentence would "rebuild the confidence investors need to have when funding innovators".

Jeffrey Schenk, an assistant U.S. attorney and lead prosecutor, said in court Wednesday that Mr. Balwani should receive a longer sentence than Ms. Holmes because he oversaw the Theranos lab, which put patients at risk.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">"Mr. Balwani had a great deal of autonomy in the management of the laboratory. He made decisions that had a direct impact on the information communicated to patients," said Mr. Schenk. lab, he added, was the source of "some of the greatest damage".

Jeffrey Coopersmith, a lawyer for Mr Balwani, accused Ms Holmes , who was not convicted of defrauding patients. "She was the C.E.O. She was the vis age of Theranos,” he said.

Mr. Balwani, who appeared in court with his family members, did not read a statement to the judge. No victims spoke.

Michael Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor who leads white-collar litigation at the Cole Schotz law firm, said Mr. Balwani faced obstacles because he didn't have "some of the same sympathies that Mrs. Holmes has." He added that Mr Balwani "being a bit older and wiser" meant "the court would expect more of him as an executive".

Before Theranos, Mr Balwani worked at software companies and helped run an e-commerce start-up, where he won a $40 million payout during the height of the dot-com boom. He and Ms. Holmes met when he was 37 and she was 18, and they started dating in secret shortly after Ms. Holmes launched Theranos in 2003. Mr. Balwani joined the company and there invested $4.6 million in...