Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced the recipients of the 70th and 71st Attorney General’s Awards, honoring Justice Department employees and others for extraordinary contributions to the enforcement of our nation’s laws. Recipients from both 2022 and 2023 were selected from a group of more than 800 nominees. Four Assistant United States Attorneys serving in the Northern District of California were among the persons who received awards during the ceremony in Washington, D.C.
“Each of today’s recipients has served with distinction, and in so doing, they have enabled the Justice Department to advance its work on behalf of the American people,” said Attorney General Garland. “Their exceptional leadership, heroism, and dedication have benefited people and communities across the country.”
“I am extremely proud to see the hard work of this team recognized by Attorney General Garland,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey. “The guilty verdicts and sentencings in the Theranos case could not have been achieved without the dedicated efforts of team members who spent many hours reviewing millions of pages of documents, organizing many skillful presentations, and delivering careful arguments in furtherance of justice for the people of the United States. The recognition is well-deserved.”
The awards presented include the John Marshall Award, named for the fourth Chief Justice of the United States. The award recognizes outstanding professional achievement by attorneys of the Justice Department. Recipients of the 2023 John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation include Northern District of California Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert S. Leach, Kelly I. Volkar, John C. Bostic, and Jeffrey D. Nedrow for their work in United States v. Holmes and United States v. Balwani. These prosecutions were also the product of outstanding work by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Schenk, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (in particular, Special Agent Mario Scussel and Special Agent Adelaida Hernandez), the U.S. Postal Inspections Service (in particular, Special Agent Christopher McCollow), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations (in particular, Special Agent in Charge George Scavdis), as well as the assistance of Madeline Wachs, Lakisha Holliman, Sara Slattery, Elise Etter, Susan Kreider, Lynette Dixon, Sahib Kaur, and Leeya Kekona. These criminal cases arose from fraud committed by defendants Elizabeth A. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani in connection with Theranos, Inc., a now-defunct blood testing company based in Palo Alto and Newark, Calif. Each defendant was convicted in a separate trial, after which Holmes was sentenced to 135 months (11 years, 3 months) in federal prison for defrauding investors in Theranos of hundreds of millions of dollars and Balwani was sentenced to 155 months (12 years, 11 months) in federal prison for fraud that risked patient health by misrepresenting the accuracy of Theranos blood analysis technology and that defrauded Theranos investors.
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