Former Theranos lawyer Elizabeth Holmes’s lawyer has asked to postpone her trial date to April 2021, citing coronavirus problems. FOX Business’ Melissa Francis and more.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday accused the co-founders of uBiome Inc., a biotechnology company in San Francisco, of defrauding investors about the ability to extend clinical trials to monitor gut health and get reimbursement from insurers.
Zachary Apte and Jessica Richman are accused of raising more than $ 76 million in two fundraising rounds while misleading investors about uBiome’s revenue growth and compensation rates, the lack of acceptance by the medical community for its tests, and their confidence in ‘ a “captive” group of doctors for testing.
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Apte, 36, and Richman, 46, each face more than 40 criminal charges, including health care, security and wire fraud, with a maximum fine of several hundred years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said. The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed related civil charges.
Attorneys for the accused did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The charges on Thursday follow uBiome’s bankruptcy filing and closing on it. The FBI raided uBiome’s headquarters last April.
UBiome’s company, founded in 2012, focused on testing microbiomes, located in the intestines and elsewhere in the body, through tests such as Gut Explorer, SmartGut and SmartJane.
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Customers can buy mail order sets, collect samples from home, do surveys and get results online within a few weeks.
According to prosecutors, many tests were not clinically validated or medically necessary, and the fraudulent practices of the accused rewarded gift cards to patients who returned samples.
Prosecutors said the fraud took place from late 2015 to early 2019, while Richman tried to arouse press interest by pretending to be younger than she was.
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The defendants looked blindly at compliance and at all costs followed a path to bring the largest investment in their business, ‘said acting U.S. attorney Stephanie Hinds in San Francisco.
Hinds’ office also prosecutes Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos Inc., who pleaded not guilty to the fraud of investors and patients by claiming that her initiation could do a wide range of medical tests with a few drops of blood.