All you need to know about Theranos' former COO Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani

In what is considered to be one of the biggest frauds in Silicon Valley, Balwani was convicted on all 12 charges in July for his role at Theranos. He has been sentenced to a prison term of 13 years

Sunny Balwani, former chief operating officer (COO) at Theranos and ex-partner of Elizabeth Holmes, has been sentenced to 155 months in prison after he was found guilty on 12 charges of fraud for his role at the now defunct blood-testing company. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison earlier in November. 

After the completion of their sentences, Balwani and Holmes will have to be under supervised release for three more years.  

In what is considered to be one of the biggest frauds in Silicon Valley, Balwani was convicted on all 12 charges in July. He spent 6 years as Theranos' COO. 

"I am responsible for everything at Theranos...All have been my decisions too," Balwani's text messages shared in the court read, as reported by The Guardian. 

His conviction has brought an end to the years-long saga of Theranos, which was founded by Holmes, at 19, in 2003. Holmes promised a revolutionary technology that could run hundreds of tests using just a drop of blood. It attracted millions of dollars worth of investment and backing from influential people like media mogul Rupert Murdoch and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Holmes was hailed as being the "next Steve Jobs". 

Also read: Ex-Theranos president Ramesh Balwani gets 13-year prison term in fraud case

It was soon discovered that nearly all the tests were inaccurate and over half of them were not even possible with a drop of blood. Holmes and Balwani continued to raise money. The technology was even deployed in some stores of Walgreens in the US. At one point, the company had a valuation of $9 billion. 

The whole empire came crumbling down when in 2015 a report by the Wall Street Journal revealed the inaccuracies in the promised technology. The company was dissolved in 2018 and Balwani and Holmes were charged with fraud. 

Who is Sunny Balwani?

Born in 1965 in Sindh, Pakistan, Sunny Balwani was born Ramesh Balwani. He studied at the boarding school, Aitchison College in Lahore. 

He, along with his family, later migrated to the US where he pursued Computer Science at the University of Texas. Balwani, however, dropped out in 1987. He would go on to get a bachelor's degree in 1997. 

He worked at Lotus Software and Microsoft briefly before joining a start up, CommerceBid.com, as president in 1999. In 2000, he exited the company and sold his shares which were valued at $40 million, mainly on the back of the dot-com boom. 

He then went to the University of California and received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree in 2003. 

According to the New York Times (NYT), there are no official records showing when he changed his name from Ramesh to Sunny. He divorced the Japanese artist Keiko Fujimoto in 2002, his name was still Ramesh. However, in 2012, when he was writing patents at Theranos, his name was Sunny. 

Balwani joined Theranos in 2009 as the COO and president. He reportedly met Holmes during a trip to China in 2002. By 2005, they were living together. However, they did not acknowledge their relationship until 2017. Holmes agreed that she had kept their relationship a secret from the investors as well as the regulators. They broke up in 2016, around the time when things started going downhill at Theranos. 

During the trial, Holmes alleged that Balwani was abusive and had misled her about the developments at Theranos. Balwani's lawyer, however, has denied all the allegations.