Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn is launching an online community for 'COVID-19 unvaccinated people,' where you can find blood donors, surrogates, and 'unvaccinated singles …
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was a national security adviser during the Trump Administration.
He pled guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contact with a Russian ambassador.
His new endeavor is a website called 4ThePURE, which is meant to connect unvaccinated people.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser who pled guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017, is launching an online community dedicated to people who have not been vaccinated for COVID-19.
The community is called 4thePURE, and members can connect with blood donors, sperm donors, breastmilk donors, surrogates, and unvaccinated singles, according to the website. It will also have a directory of “COVID-19 unvaccinated patriot businesses.”
It’s unclear when the website went live, but the company began tweeting about its service earlier this month. Flynn and a spokesperson for 4thePURE did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside of working hours.
In an advertisement on the site, Flyyn said 4thePURE’s purpose is to”connect liked-minded individuals who courageously stood against the COVID-19 jab.”
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“Our programs will be used for news updates, friendships, dating, and business networking,” Flynn, who is described as the founder of 4thePURE, said in the ad.
A “full member site” is scheduled to launch in June. A lifetime founding membership will cost $2,500. Companies can purchase 15 lifetime memberships for $25,000.
Flynn was Trump’s national security adviser for less than a month before he resigned after acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the White House that the lieutenant general may have lied to officials about his contact with a Russian diplomat.
He pled guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017. Trump pardoned Flynn three years later.
Since then, Flynn re-emerged into the spotlight to embrace QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory, and other falsities about COVID-19. Last year, he went on Alex Jones’s Infowars show to say that the coronavirus was created by billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates as well Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum.
Meet Sunny Balwani: Theranos No. 2 and Elizabeth Holmes’ ex-boyfriend who’s serving a 13-year prison sentence and was just ordered to pay $452 million in restitution with her
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Elizabeth Holmes’ ex and right-hand man at Theranos, reported to prison in April.
In mid May, he and Holmes were ordered to pay $452 million in restitution to victims of their fraud at Theranos.
Here’s everything you need to know about Balwani’s life and career.
The one-time star founder was found guilty on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy last January after a four-month trial. She was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, with three years of supervised release.
Meanwhile, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her ex-boyfriend and Theranos’ former president and COO, was also been convicted of fraud and handed a prison sentence. In July, a jury found him guilty on all 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy that were brought against him. He was sentenced to just under 13 years in prison, with three years of probation.
In April, he reported to a low-security federal prison in California to begin serving his sentence, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons records. This week, a judge ordered that he and Holmes pay $452 million in restitution to victims of their fraud at Theranos, including $125 million to media mogul and Theranos investor Rupert Murdoch.
While Holmes was once lauded as the next Steve Jobs and deemed the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, Balwani has largely remained an enigma. Online information and photos of him predating the DOJ’s case are scarce, especially considering his tenure in the tech industry and position as a C-suite executive.
Here’s a closer look at what we do know about Balwani’s often-mysterious life and career:
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was born in Pakistan in June 13, 1965.
To this day, it’s unclear why his nickname is Sunny.
He and his parents later moved to India before coming to the US.
In 1986, he began studying information systems at The University of Texas at Austin.
He later went on to work as a sales manager for Microsoft in Northern California.
He also worked at Lotus Software, but his position and tenure there are unclear.
Amid the dot-com boom, Balwani joined a startup called CommerceBid as president in October 1999. The software development company hosted online business-to-business auctions.
The startup was acquired within a year by another software development company, Commerce One, for $225 million.
The dot-com bubble burst not long after and the company went bang, but not before Balwani walked away with a reported $40 million.
Balwani was once married to an artist named Keiko Fujimoto. They lived together in San Francisco before divorcing in 2002.
In 2003, he went back to school, pursuing an MBA at UC Berkeley. It was around this time that he met Holmes.
They met on a trip to Beijing that was part of a summer Mandarin immersion program run by Stanford University. Holmes was 18 years old at the time, and Balwani was 37.
They initially became friends and grew romantically involved later, around the time Holmes dropped out of Stanford at 19 years old to focus on Theranos.
In Theranos’ infancy, Balwani gave Holmes advice and encouragement. As they became romantically involved, they began living together, sharing a condo in Palo Alto by the summer of 2005.
In 2008, Theranos’ board wanted to replace Holmes as CEO with someone more experienced. She ultimately convinced the board to let her stay, partly by promising to bring on Balwani, who she said would help patch things up at the company, though she didn’t disclose their relationship. Balwani ended up giving Theranos a personal loan of between $12 and $14 million after the well nearly ran dry at the company, and he became Holmes’ right-hand man in 2009.
Theranos employees viewed Balwani, who was president and COO in his time at Theranos, as “the enforcer.”
According to John Carreyrou’s book on the Theranos saga, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” Balwani tracked how long employees were working, even telling one software engineer “I’m going to fix you” after confronting the staffer with a security tape of him only working an eight-hour day. The employee resigned and left, as Balwani called a security officer to go after him and later called the cops on the staffer.
Balwani was known to fire employees on the spot at Theranos and scold lab scientists when tests failed.
In October 2015, Carreyrou, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, published an exposé on Theranos’ testing struggles that would be the start of the company’s downfall.
In 2016, the Journal reported that Theranos was under scrutiny by the FDA, SEC, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Later that year, in May, Balwani left Theranos amid the regulatory probes of the company.
In March 2018, the SEC charged Balwani, Holmes, and Theranos with “massive fraud.” The agency accused them of “raising more than $700 million from investors through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance.”
While Holmes and Theranos agreed to settle the SEC’s fraud charges against them without admitting or denying the allegations, Balwani has tried to fight the charges in California federal district court.
As for Balwani and Holmes’ relationship, it remained a secret for a while. In deposition tapes obtained by ABC News in 2019, Holmes confirmed they had been living together and romantically involved. Investors had been kept in the dark about their relationship, which ended around the time Balwani left Theranos.
In June 2018, Balwani was indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Holmes was indicted on the same charges.
Holmes’ trial may have shed some additional light on Balwani, as many witnesses, including Holmes herself, spoke about him on the stand.
Holmes testified that Balwani emotionally and physically abused her, which he has denied.
Former Theranos employees testified that Balwani dismissed concerns they raised about the company’s testing capabilities.
Theranos whistleblower Erika Cheung, a former lab worker at the company, said Balwani told her, “What makes you think you’re qualified to make these calls?” when she raised testing issues with him.
Alan Eisenman, a retired money manager and financial planner, first invested in Theranos in 2006 and said he grew concerned when he stopped receiving quarterly updates about the company from Holmes. When Eisenman tried to get information about Theranos’ happenings, he said Balwani was “hostile” and “aggressive” towards him. When Eisenman discussed potentially selling his shares in Theranos, Balwani responded, “Your emails are insulting full of inaccurate statements and wasteful of our time. Our next response to this email and all your future emails will come from our counsel.”
Then, Balwani’s own trial kicked off.
Experts speculated that Balwani would likely not fare well at his trial, and would meet the same fate as his former partner.
His monthslong trial showcased many of the same witnesses as Holmes’ trial. After five days of deliberation, a jury convicted Balwani on all 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy in July.
In early December, he was sentenced to 155 months, or almost 13 years, in prison with three years of probation. The judge ordered him to self-surrender on March 15, 2023.
Balwani is contesting his conviction. He was denied his request to remain free while appealing his conviction, but he was able to delay his prison reporting date by a few weeks. On April 20, he turned himself in to begin serving his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution Terminal Island, a low-security federal prison in San Pedro, California.
“Mr Balwani turned himself in… smoothly without incident,” Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s attorney, told CNN. “We will continue to fight for him because we do not believe that he received a fair trial.”
This week, a judge ordered Holmes and Balwani to pay $452 million in restitution to victims of their fraud at Theranos.
The largest amount included in that sum is $125 million for Rupert Murdoch, reflecting his full investment in Theranos. Other investors listed to receive restitution include former Wells Fargo CEO Richard Kovacevich; Lucas Venture Group, which is associated with prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist Don Lucas; and the RDV Corporation, which manages assets for the DeVos family, including Amway cofounder Richard DeVos and former US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Balwani’s role at the company is also a focal point in the Hulu limited series, “The Dropout,” which gives a dramatized account of the rise and fall of Theranos and Holmes, who is played by Amanda Seyfried. The show is based on the ABC News podcast of the same name.
Balwani is played by Naveen Andrews in “The Dropout.”
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While the origins of COVID-19 continue to be under investigation, there is zero evidence to support that the pandemic was a deliberate plot carried out by the world’s elites, as some conspiracy theorists suggest.
