Sunny Balwani trial to start two months after Elizabeth Holmes’s guilty verdict

theguardian.com:

Two months after Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of defrauding Theranos investors, her former business and romantic partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, is set to begin his own trial on Wednesday.

The trial of Balwani, who served as the blood testing startup’s co-president, shares several parallels with Holmes’s. The businessman is accused of similar crimes, including wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors, and will appear in the same San Jose, California, courthouse where Holmes spent more than 12 weeks defending herself.

Jury selection begins on Wednesday, with opening arguments expected to start on Wednesday of next week.

Balwani’s case marks the latest chapter in a cautionary tale that has inspired films, podcasts and a television show, and prompted a reckoning with the Silicon Valley hype machine.

Both trials centered on the spectacular rise and fall of Theranos, the company Holmes founded after dropping out of Stanford at 19 years old that promised a revolutionary blood testing technology, attracting millions of dollars in investments.

But in 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company fell short of this ambitious pledge, revealing that its tests were largely inaccurate and that it was running most labs on third-party machines with traditional blood drawing techniques.

A jury convicted Holmes in early January of four counts related to wire fraud against investors, and remains free on bond pending her sentencing hearing on 26 September 2022, after Balwani’s trial concludes.

Balwani, 56, is being charged separately for his own role in Theranos, where he served in varying capacities including co-president and a member of the board from 2009 to 2016. He has pleaded not guilty.

While guilty verdict in the