The jury on Tuesday is scheduled to hear the final arguments in the trial of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former Theranos official accused of collaborating with his secret mistress, CEO Elizabeth Holmes, to commit a massive fraud.
The three months of testimony and evidence reflect the case against Holmes in a separate trial last year.  Holmes was convicted of four counts of investor fraud and acquitted of four counts of allegedly defrauding patients who underwent blood tests at Theranos.  He is free on $ 500,000 bail but faces up to 20 years in prison.  Baluani faces the same punishment if convicted.
Holmes, 38, is awaiting sentencing in September.
Balwani, 57,’s lawyers have portrayed him as a well-meaning investor and businessman who became chief executive of Theranos in 2010 and was subsequently seduced by Holmes.  She later abandoned him as her lover and partner in 2016 as Thiranos began to unfold.
Prior to the split, Balwani had pledged $ 15 million of his own money to help support Theranos when Holmes brought him on board as her top lieutenant while they were secretly living together.  Balwani’s investment in Theranos eventually became worth about $ 500 million in securities – a stake that lawyers told jurors he never sold.  It became useless when the company collapsed.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have portrayed Balwani as a ruthless accomplice who helped Holmes deceive investors.  At one point, they accused Balwani of overseeing Theranos Laboratory, which covered serious defects in the company’s hematology technology that could endanger patients’ lives.
Holmes’s bold claims to Thirano helped her become a Silicon Valley star – also rich, with a $ 4.5 billion paper fortune based on the company’s success in raising funds and brokering business deals based on his promise. would revolutionize healthcare.  Holmes boasted that the company had developed a technology that could detect more than 200 potential health problems with a few drops of blood taken with a fingertip.
Baluani started dating Holmes at the same time that Theranos started, and then began providing business advice from his previous success, which included selling a startup technology that made him rich.  Their relationship was the focus of a Hulu TV series, “The Dropout,” about the rise and fall of Holmes shortly before the trial began, complicating efforts to select an impartial jury.
During her trial, Holmes took the position of witness and at one point tearfully accused Balouani of being a dominant figure in her life who subjected her to emotional and sexual abuse.  One of Balwani’s other attorneys categorically denied the allegations during Holmes’ trial.  Balwani’s lawyers urged jurors in the current trial to reject anything they may have read or heard in the past about Holmes’s allegations.
There were speculations that Holmes could return to court to testify against Baluani during his trial, but this never happened.  Unlike Holmes, Baluani chose not to testify in his own defense during his trial.