Prosecutors have added a twelfth fraud charge against former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, the Mercury News reports.
Theranos, which was once valued at $9 billion, ran into trouble after a series of Wall Street Journal articles raised questions about its technology and ability to run diagnostic tests on a finger-prick's worth of blood. An investigation by US regulators uncovered a number of questionable lab practices at the firm, which led to Holmes and Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani, the company's president, being barred in 2016 from owning or operating any lab for two years.
Theranos eventually shuttered its labs in 2016 and closed in 2018.
Also in 2018, Holmes and Balwani were indicted on nine charges of wire fraud and two charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors allege Holmes and Balwani defrauded investors and doctors as they knew Theranos could not run tests as claimed. Both pleaded not guilty, and Holmes' trial was scheduled to begin this August, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has pushed her trial back to at least late October, as CNBC reported last month.
According to the Mercury News, a new fraud charge was filed in the case relating to a patient's testing results.