Ramesh Balwani, a former executive at the failed blood test start-up Theranos, was scheduled to report to prison Thursday to serve out a 13-year sentence after he was found guilty on multiple wire fraud charges. File Photo by John G. Mabanglo/EPA-EFE
April 20 (UPI) — Ramesh Balwani, a former executive at the failed blood test start-up Theranos, was scheduled to report to prison Thursday to serve out a 13-year sentence after he was found guilty on multiple wire fraud charges.
Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s attorney, said in an email to CNN on Thursday that his client turned himself in “smoothly without incident.”
“We will continue to fight for him because we do not believe that he received a fair trial,” Coopersmith said.
Balwani, who was assigned the U.S. Bureau of Prisons registration number 24966-111, has not yet been listed as in custody in the federal inmate database.
The highly publicized case began when Balwani, alongside Theranos founder and ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Holmes, was indicted almost five years ago and sentenced to 12 years and 11 months in prison in December.
Holmes was previously sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for defrauding investors after claiming that a new device could perform blood tests with the prick of a finger.
Balwani and Holmes falsely claimed the blood analyzer could replace tests that would normally be performed by a lab and deliver results with more accuracy.