Federal prosecutors have restored a 12th felony fraud charge against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
The Stanford University dropout is accused of bilking investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and defrauding doctors and patients with false claims about her now-defunct Palo Alto startup’s blood-testing technology. She is in pre-trial proceedings, conducted via video-conference, in U.S. District Court in San Jose. Holmes was first indicted in June 2018 on 11 fraud counts. She and her co-accused, former company president Sunny Balwani, have pleaded not guilty.
The charge added this week in a new indictment relates to a patient’s blood test.
Prosecutors had originally added that charge in May, in a process Holmes’ lawyers in a court filing called “patently unconstitutional.” Then the government filed a second indictment that removed the charge, without explaining why. And on Tuesday, prosecutors filed a third indictment, which restored the charge.
Holmes’ lawyers had already claimed the second indictment may have violated her rights because the grand jury that produced it was created during the coronavirus pandemic, and they had asked Judge Edward Davila to give them access to grand jury selection records.
In a court filing Thursday, her lawyers broadened their claim and request to include the grand jury that produced the third indictment. Holmes legal team said it had “serious concerns” about whether a grand jury representing a cross-section of the community could be pulled together, as required by law, amid the economic crisis and health threats created by the pandemic.
Holmes’ trial has been delayed by the pandemic and Davila has suggested it could go ahead in February.
