Pierre

Please share this. Vivek Ramaswamy and his mother Geetha Ramaswamy may not have been the first mother-son crime team, but they certainly stand out as the most lucrative. Their success surpasses that of the infamous Sante Kimes and her son, Kenneth Kimes Jr., by a significant margin. During the 1990s, Sante and Kenneth Kimes engaged in a series of heinous crimes, including theft, fraud, and murder, to amass millions of properties and cash worth over $8 million. In contrast, Vivek and Geetha Ramaswamy orchestrated a pharmaceutical scam through Vivek's Axovant company, resulting in a substantial profit of $37 million. Given Vivek’s fascination with mothers, it would be prudent to investigate the background of Vivek’s mother. Geetha Ramaswamy, a graduate of the Mysore Medical College and Research Institute in India, married Vadakanchery Ganapathy Ramaswamy (commonly referred to as V.G. Ramaswamy) and relocated to the United States from Palakkad, Kerala, India, during the 1970s. During a recent interview regarding his ancestry, Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed that neither of his parents was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth on August 9, 1985. However, his campaign staff clarified that both parents held green cards at that time. Vivek Ramaswamy’s younger brother, Shankar Ramaswamy, is 37 years old and serves as the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kriya Therapeutics, a biotechnology and gene therapy company headquartered in North Carolina. Kriya Therapeutics specializes in the development of one-time gene therapies for chronic and prevalent diseases. Geetha became a naturalized U.S. citizen later on (she successfully passed the naturalization civics test and was officially naturalized as a U.S. citizen in October 2004 at Three Rivers Middle School in Ohio). In contrast, her husband, V.G., opted to retain his Indian citizenship and did not naturalize as a U.S. citizen. Geetha pursued a career as a geriatric psychiatrist and secured employment at pharmaceutical companies Merck and Schering-Plough, while V.G. held positions as an engineer and patent attorney at General Electric. In 2014, Vivek Ramaswamy established Axovant, a company he founded to acquire the rights to an ineffective Alzheimer’s drug that had repeatedly failed in clinical trials. Initially developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) under the code SB-742457, the drug Intepirdine was acquired by Ramaswamy’s Axovant Science from GSK in December 2014 for $5 million. Intepirdine (also known as RVT-101 or SB-742457)I s an experimental drug that inhibits the 5-HT₆ receptor in the central nervous system. This inhibition is believed to facilitate the release of acetylcholine and other neurotransmitters. Subsequently, Vivek Ramaswamy enlisted the assistance of his mother, who, despite lacking pertinent research experience, contributed to the improper manipulation of data from past clinical trials. This manipulation was intended to enhance the perceived efficacy of the drug. The extent of the mother Geetha Ramaswamy’s involvement has not been previously disclosed, and the majority of the relevant evidence remains restricted due to legal impediments. In 2015, Ramaswamy -, leveraging his mother’s reinterpretation of data, - led Axovant to a $1.4 billion initial public offering, the largest in the biotechnology industry at the time. During the following two years, he actively promoted Intepirdine, as a breakthrough for the millions of Americans affected by Alzheimer’s disease. Intepirdine was also promoted for its potential efficacy in treating dementia with Lewy bodies. Then, after covertly restructuring the company to shield himself and other insiders from potential financial losses, Ramaswamy exited the company through a private channel several weeks prior to another clinical failure that severely impacted the stock price. In September 2017, Axovant’s experimental Alzheimer’s drug, Intepirdine, failed its Phase 3 clinical trial, leading to a substantial decline in the company’s stock price. This decline resulted in a 70% drop in a single day, erasing over $1.3 billion in market value. While company founder Vivek Ramaswamy and his family experienced significant capital gains and payouts, ordinary retirees and institutional shareholders were disproportionately affected by the losses. Public securities filings revealed that several substantial institutional public funds serving state employees and educators experienced direct losses from holding public stocks during the crash. California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS): SEC tracking indicated that CalSTRS’s investment in Axovant was nearly entirely eliminated. Its position diminished from $1.23 million to just $68,000. State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio (STRS Ohio): Traded significantly during the crash window, with their shares declining from a value of $744,000 to $227,000 within a single quarter.. Following Vivek Ramaswamy’s Intepirdine scheme, Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy resigned from both her pharmaceutical medical practice and her career as a geriatric psychiatrist and still resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has not been charged with any criminal offense related to her alleged manipulation of data from past clinical trials to enhance the drug’s perceived efficacy. Axovant Sciences was accused of orchestrating a pump-and-dump scheme, a fraudulent practice involving a select group of investment leaders who transfer substantial sums of money, representing a significant portion of the assets under management, to manipulate the market value of a publicly traded financial instrument. Despite public criticism and allegations of securities fraud and a discernible “pump and dump” scheme, Axovant Sciences and its founder, Vivek Ramaswamy, have not been criminally charged or held liable. While critics, political opponents, and business experts have publicly characterized the sequence of events as a criminal scheme, the FDA, under the Trump administration, asserts that the company’s actions remained within the bounds of standard high-risk biotechnology speculation under U.S. securities laws. The FDA further maintained that Ramaswamy and Axovant consistently disclosed that the drug, Intepirdine, was a high-risk asset that had previously failed clinical trials under GlaxoSmithKline, which, according to their interpretation, absolved them of liability. Axovant and Ramaswamy were subject to standard shareholder class-action investigations and lawsuits following the 70% single-day stock decline in 2017. In the biotechnology sector, stock declines following unsuccessful Phase 3 clinical trials typically trigger civil shareholder litigation, but these are civil disputes rather than criminal fraud prosecutions. Ultimately, opinions on reflect a divided perspective: some users perceive the aggressive promotion and subsequent profit-making from a known failed asset as an unethical and legal loophole, while others argue that high-risk drug development and transparently disclosed speculation do not legally constitute fraud. Axovant later rebranded as Axovant Gene Therapies (and subsequently Sio Gene Therapies) before ceasing operations. With the appropriate assistance of the Trump administration and the FDA, Ramaswamy and his mother successfully evaded criminal charges.