Investors once again lined up to blame Sunny Balwani for the failure of med-tech startup Theranos.
The former chief operating officer of the now-defunct company is accused of defrauding investors and customers and on Friday, the focus of the prosecution has moved to money.
Two investors, who combined to put millions of dollars into Theranos, testified that it was Balwani who spoke to them about the promise of Theranos' blood testing machines.
When the company went bust, both investors lost all their money.
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“They're trying to show that Sunny Balwani wasn't just in the lab. That, as an investor, this gives him credence with other investors because, unlike Elizabeth Holmes, who was a 19-year-old dropout of Stanford doing her first startup, Sunny Balwani should have known better, the other investors assumed,” said Aron Solomon, legal analyst at Esquire Digital.
What this means is that the prosecution has now placed Balwani in decision-making roles both in the Theranos labs, and when it comes to luring investors to the company.
Since the prosecution is following its own playbook from the Holmes’ trial pretty closely, we're likely to hear from some patients who got flawed results from Theranos tests in the near future.
