FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 12, 2026
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Billionaire Scammer Ramaswamy Used Mother to Manipulate Clinical Trials in “Pump and Dump” Scheme to Make Millions
COLUMBUS, OH– Today, new reporting details how billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy hired his own mother, who lacked research experience, to manipulate clinical trial data in an alleged “pump and dump” pharmaceutical scheme. After spending months claiming the drug was “best-in-class” for Alzheimer’s patients and their families, Ramaswamy “cashed out” through a private back door just weeks before another clinical failure cratered the company’s stock price, and made out with nearly $260 million.
“Vivek Ramaswamy will do anything, including shamelessly profiting off Alzheimer’s patients and getting his own mother to manipulate clinical trial data, to make a buck. We cannot trust a scam artist billionaire to put Ohio first, from lowering our costs to taking on corruption,” said Addie Bullock, Communications Director, Ohioans for Amy Acton Acton.
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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