Former Theranos exec Sunny Balwani convicted of 12 counts of fraud

The former Theranos executive Sunny Balwani has been convicted on all 12 fraud charges brought against him for his role at the now-defunct blood testing company.

The 57-year-old businessman had pleaded not guilty and now faces as many as 20 years in prison. Holmes is out on bail and will be sentenced on 26 September. Balwani will be sentenced on 15 November.

Holmes and Balwani, former business and romantic partners, had vowed to upend the medical testing industry with a blood test that could scan for more than 200 potential health problems with just a few drops of blood, a promise that was later discovered to have little basis in reality.

The company had risen to the top of Silicon Valley with Holmes at the helm, attracting big-name investors including the former secretaries of state George Schultz and Henry Kissinger. At its height, Theranos was valued at more than $9bn.

Its downward spiral began when in 2015, Wall Street Journal reporting aided by company whistleblowers revealed in-house tests had serious inaccuracies and that the company was performing other tests using traditional blood drawing methodology and outside labs.

Throughout his trial, federal prosecutors depicted Balwani as a willing accomplice to the fraud spearheaded by Holmes. Lawyers called on witnesses including investors and executives who said Balwani shared false financial projections about the viability of the company.

Defense attorneys depicted Balwani as a loyal soldier who under the direction of Holmes tried to save the blood-testing company.

The guilty verdicts for both Holmes and Balwani have been seen as an indictment of the tech industry, and the end of an era in which companies can ride unchecked hype backed by little substance to large amounts of funding. Prosecutors underscored throughout the trial the real-world impact of Theranos, including tests that inaccurately told patients they were experiencing miscarriages or cancer.