Former Theranos COO Sunny Balwani Sentenced To Nearly 13 Years In Prison - Slash...

Former Theranos COO Sunny Balwani Sentenced To Nearly 13 Years In Prison

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• 1 hidden comment

• Re:

  I think the key title is president. That is the person theoretically in charge of the day to day operations.

• • Re:

    Bug will be fixed in next release.

• Re:

  Elizabeth Holmes: 135 months
  Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani: 155 months

  She got a 12.9% less.
  He has got a 14.81% more.

  I have no idea of the details. But it's not "like half".

  This may be relevant, not sure, but it's funny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • Re:

    I'm just amazed they stuck around to be prosecuted. If you are running a huge scam shouldn't you have an exit plan that involves moving to a country with no US extradition treaty?

    • Re:

      It is unlikely that they planned to scam anyone. In the beginning, they thought their technology would work. But they got behind schedule, so they fudged a little. Expectations rose as they fell further behind, so they doubled down on the fakery to buy some time. Then they realized their tech would never work as they hoped. But they were darlings of the VC scene, with their photos on the cover of Forbes. So what do they do? Come clean and watch their dream fall apart, or continue the con for as long as they

      • Re:

        I believe you are right. But they were willing to do the crime, and there is something called criminal stupidity.

        About the most generous excuse is that they were drawn into their con very slowly - just a little deeper each day.

        The part that I don't get is - the first time I saw and listened to her, I knew immediately she was on a con job. The seeming impossibility of the goal, the weird purposeful low voice that made her sound stupid than anything else.

        It was a different sort of con though, which wa

        • Re:

          Some VCs likely figured out it was fake, but they were already invested. So rather than sink the ship, they let it float until they could offload their stake onto a greater fool. Unfortunately for them, it sank too quickly.

          All of the people who lost money were sophisticated investors who should have done their due diligence.

        • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @11:55AM (#63113672)

          It's a little different than your garden variety silicon valley con, because in this case people could die from their lies, not just lose money.

          The root con was the self-con of hubris, thinking "I had a great idea while stoned, and it will surely work because I am so brilliant."

      • Re:

        But the basis behind their tech was flimsy. Maybe Balwani believed it as he didn't have any medical education (or technological apparently). The technology does not yet exist to do all the types of blood tests claimed on microscopic amounts of blood. There are patents for such from Theranos but the current US Patent Office no longer requires working models or even a basis in reality. their machine was based on what was essentially science fiction, and then hyped about how they would use the internet to ass

    • Re:

      Their ego+money probably made them think they were untouchable.

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      Only if you're smart. You can be dumb and run a scam. Sometimes the dumb scammers even end up believing in their own scams. Or more likely, the dumb CEOs of companies fail to notice how bad things really are and instead believe that the future is rosy and everything will be fine as long as you push the team harder and lie on the financials until you get past whatever temporary hurdles are in the way. The smart CEOs cut and run when they see the writing on the wall.

  • Glass ceiling

    She got a 12.9% less.

    Women always get less than men for the same work.

• Re:

  She'll get out early too on an Epstein-like "work release".

  It's called being protected. Kissinger was her main Board member.

  Back when they were hunting for UBL the spooks dreamed of a worldwide DNA database.

  Being the monopoly blood testing service was an ideal mechanism and the current system *is* inefficient and wasteful.

  They thought they could front-run a psyop, get the media to run with "Girl Steve Jobs" and do the dirty with OPM. I smelled a turd as soon as the black turtleneck came out (if only I cou

  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    This is no parole in the federal system
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].

  • Re:

    "Kissinger was her main Board member."

    The insane part is that people who should know better think that it's OK to let people with NO EXPERIENCE make decisions in situations in a field where experience is critical.

    It happens across the board. It's fine to let a Harvard dropout run a stalking site, but to let it happen for health, trucking, industrial facilities... it's madness!

• by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @09:31AM (#63113260)

  Is this one any more responsible than the CEO? Or why did she get like half of this sentence?

  In general, women get lesser sentences than men for the same crime. https://www.ussc.gov/research/... [ussc.gov]

• by gosso920 ( 6330142 ) on Thursday December 08, 2022 @10:28AM (#63113376)

  He couldn't earn any sympathy points, since he didn't get pregnant.

• Re:

  on average, men are more likely, than women, to be charged and convicted of a similar crime. However, when convicted, men receive 63% longer sentences than women, ceteris paribus.
  
  Cited:
  "Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases"
  Lar and Economics Review 17, no. 1 (2014): 127-59
  
  With that in mind, he got off lightly.

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  The CEO is not responsible. The CEO is accountable. There's a very big difference and it's the reason a COO position exists in the first place. Accountability is wide reaching but a step removed from those responsible for specific parts of a company. Historically the COO / CFO are far more directly linked to crimes of a business and typically end up with larger sentences. The exception is those who co-operate, quite often the CFO throws the CEO under the bus.

  She didn't. She got 85% of the sentence.