Ramaswamy served as “frontman,” hired own mother to “massage data” to make“an estimated $260 million”
Columbus, Ohio — New reporting exposed how Vivek Ramaswamy hired his mother to “massage” failed clinical trial data as part of a likely pump-and-dump scheme.
As the investigation reveals, Ramaswamy served as “the frontman” for a “dubious pharmaceutical company” and “cashed out weeks before its dramatic crash.” He hired his own mother to manipulate data from failed clinical trials to make the drug look promising, despite her lack of clinical trial experience. Ramaswamy used his own mother’s analysis to scam his way into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Vivek Ramaswamy’s multi-million dollar ‘pump and dump’ scam makes clear he will do anything to line his pockets, including hiring his own mother to manipulate clinical trial data for an Alzheimer’s drug that clearly didn’t work,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokeswoman Katie Seewer. “Whether it’s Alzheimer’s patients or hardworking Ohioans, Vivek Ramaswamy can’t be trusted to fight for them because he only cares about himself.”
READ MORE: How Vivek Ramaswamy’s mom manipulated Alzheimer’s data and made her son rich
- Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire and the Republican nominee in Ohio’s gubernatorial race, served as the frontman for a dubious pharmaceutical company and then cashed out weeks before its dramatic crash.
- In 2014, Ramaswamy founded Axovant, a company he used to buy the rights to an inauspicious Alzheimer’s drug that had repeatedly failed in clinical trials. Axovant then hired Ramaswamy’s mother, who, despite lacking relevant research experience, helped massage data from old clinical trials to make the drug appear more promising. The extent of the elder Ramaswamy’s role has not been previously reported.
- In 2015, touting his mother’s reinterpretation of the data to potential investors and regulators, Ramaswamy led Axovant to a $1.4 billion initial public offering, the largest in biotech history at the time. He spent the ensuing two years promoting the drug intepirdine as a possible breakthrough for the millions of Americans who have Alzheimer’s disease.
- Ramaswamy used his mother’s dubious math to help raise $315 million during Axovant’s $1.4 billion IPO, figures the company reached on no revenue.
- Since winning the Republican nomination in the Ohio gubernatorial race, Ramaswamy has shied away from discussing his time in biotech, choosing instead to cast his business success story in more vague terms, noted David Niven, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati.
- The basic reality of how Ramaswamy ran Axovant, Niven added, “was heads I win and tails I also win, in terms of the outcomes of the trials or whether the drugs actually proved useful or not.”
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