Federal court grants seven-week postponement of Holmes’ criminal fraud trial, pushing start date to August 31
Clinical laboratories have rarely seen a saga like that of defunct Theranos and its former CEO Elizabeth Holmes. And yet, just when we think nothing else could be added to the drama, it turns out Holmes is now pregnant and requesting a change to the court dates to accommodate her condition.
And the courts have agreed. After being delayed multiple times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a federal judge has pushed back Holmes’ trial from mid-July to August 31 because Holmes is due to give birth in July.
United States District Court Judge Edward Davila ruled March 19 that he would grant a six-week delay to Holmes, The Mercury News reported, however Davila told Holmes in a San Jose U.S. District Court videoconference hearing on March 17 he wants the trial to begin in August without any further delays.
Allegations of Fraud Involving Issues with Clinical Laboratory Tests
Holmes is facing 12 counts of wire fraud charges for alleged false claims that Theranos had created a revolutionary technology for performing a wide range of clinical laboratory tests using a tiny amount of blood. In a series of investigative reports that Dark Daily covered, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) alleged Theranos had not disclosed publicly that the vast majority of its tests were not being done with proprietary technology but with traditional machines purchased from Siemens AG and other companies.
Elizabeth Holmes, 37 (above), founded now-defunct Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University. The blood testing company reached a peak valuation of $9 billion in 2015, but its Cinderella story hit the skids later that same year when a Wall Street Journal investigation exposed the company’s massive deceptions and questionable practices related to its finger-prick blood-testing technology. Dark Daily covered how these events, and the eventual fall of Theranos, affected clinical laboratories nationwide in multiple ebriefings starting in 2015. (Photo copyright: SFGATE.)
Prosecutors Express Their Frustration
While prosecutors supported the latest postponement in Holmes’ trial, they expressed irritation they were not notified sooner about Holmes’ pregnancy.
“It’s frustrating and disappointing to learn about this now,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Leach said during a video conference call, CNBC reported, noting that Leach pointed out prosecutors were informed about Holmes’ pregnancy on March 2.
Holmes’ pregnancy is, apparently, not a surprise to at least one of her critics. In 2019, the Toronto Sun reported that a “cynical” former Theranos’ employee told Vanity Fair, “Holmes is going to get pregnant before she gets on the stand because she will look very sympathetic as a pregnant woman on the stand.”
NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos maintains Holmes’ status as a new mother may prove beneficial in her quest to avoid prison time. Holmes faces maximum penalties of 20 years behind bars and a $2.75 million fine, plus restitution.
“Whether conscious or unconscious, judges, prosecutors, and jurors might worry about the effect of maternal incarceration on a newborn baby in a way that they don’t when the defendant is male,” Cevallos told CNBC. “Being a new mother can only help get her sympathy from jurors.
“If convicted, even if her sentencing guidelines call for incarceration, her attorneys will place her motherhood front and central before the judge,” Cevallos added.
According to an earlier CNBC article, defense attorneys and prosecutors asked Davila to delay the start of the trial in a court filing March 12.
“On March 2, 2021, counsel for Defendant advised the government that Defendant is pregnant, with an expected due date in July 2021,” prosecutors and attorneys for Holmes wrote in the filing, CNBC reported. “Both parties agree that, in light of this development, it is not feasible to begin the trial on July 13, 2021.”
Is the Curtain Finally Closing on Theranos?
Bloomberg reported that Holmes’ defense team may be considering an insanity defense. That possibility became public knowledge when a September 2020 court filing revealed defense attorneys were planning to introduce evidence of “mental disease or defect” or other mental condition “bearing on the issue of guilt.”
Will clinical laboratory professionals who have followed with interest the rise and fall of Theranos see a closing chapter in the disgraced in vitro diagnostics company’s saga when Holmes does finally stand trial this fall? Maybe. Meanwhile, the melodrama continues.
Government prosecutors allege destruction of LIS database and point to Holmes’ extravagant lifestyle as evidence of fraud motive
There is a new twist in the federal criminal fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, co-founder and former CEO of now defunct clinical laboratory testing company Theranos. Once again, the trial has been delayed. In the meantime, however, dueling court filings between prosecutors and defense lawyers have shed additional light on the allegations against Holmes and co-defendant Ramesh Balwani, the company’s chief operating officer. The revelations will be of interest to medical laboratory leaders.
According to The Mercury News, United States District Judge Edward J. Davila cited the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in his December 18 ruling that postponed the start of Holmes’ trial to July 13, 2021.
In his ruling, Judge Davila wrote, “The court notes sadly, the impact on our lives is grim. California is in the midst of an unprecedented surge in cases and hospitalizations.”
The judge also noted the prospects for widespread public vaccination in the coming months. “All of this supports continuing the trial [of Holmes] to a time when our community is safer,” he added. “The court recognizes that a continuance of the trial will cause great inconvenience to victims who would like their day in court, as well as Defendant, who wishes a speedy opportunity to defend against the charges. All of these rights are important, but paramount to the court is the safety and health of the community.”
On February 9, Law360 reported that Balwani’s trial was delayed even further, with jury selection now set to begin on January 11, 2022.
Wall Street Journal Exposé of Theranos and its Flawed Clinical Lab Testing
In “Elizabeth Holmes: The Breakthrough of Instant Diagnosis,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) put Holmes squarely in the public eye. It could be credibly asserted that the paper’s fawning coverage helped boost her credibility when no one knew who she was. Thus, it is ironic that just two years later it was the WSJ that, in a series of articles, exposed the alleged misrepresentation and fraud committed by Holmes, Balwani, and Theranos.
By 2015, the company had a stock valuation of $9 billion, but it all came crashing down after WSJ investigative journalist John Carreyrou revealed serious problems with the company’s management and technology.
In a public notification from the US Attorney’s Office Northern District of California, the government alleged that Holmes and former Theranos president Balwani promoted the company’s blood-testing technology despite knowing that it was likely to produce unreliable results.
The defendants now face 12 federal felony counts related to wire fraud. They have pleaded not guilty. According to The Mercury News, if found guilty of all charges, “Holmes faces a potential 20-year prison sentence, up to $2.75 million in fines, and possible restitution to investors the government alleges lost more than $700 million.”
Elizabeth Holmes (above), former CEO of now defunct clinical laboratory testing company Theranos, will now stand trial starting in July. Due to risk of infection from the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, jurors will be required to wear masks and to socially distance during the trial, CNBC reported. What will be of great interest to clinical laboratories are statements by federal prosecutors that testing data stored on the company’s laboratory information system was destroyed before it could be accessed by investigators, even though it had been subpoenaed months earlier by a federal grand jury. (Photo copyright: Forbes/Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images.)
Missing Clinical Laboratory Data
Though the trial has been delayed, attorneys on both sides have been busy. Last November, after failing to have the charges dismissed, defense attorneys filed a flurry of motions seeking to exclude much of the government’s evidence, The Mercury News reported. This included expert witnesses, testimony about inaccurate test results, and numerous news articles about the company and its tests.
Prosecutors responded to the motions in January, further illuminating their case while providing more fodder for media coverage.
In a January 11 filing [doc-682], the government alleged that a Theranos laboratory information system (LIS) containing patient test results and quality control data was destroyed “on or about August 31, 2018—three months after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena requesting a working copy of this database.” News of the allegation was first reported by The Register, a UK-based IT publication.
Previously, the prosecutors alleged, Theranos, with assistance from an IT contractor, had provided a backup copy of the database to the government but without a password needed for decryption. “All subsequent efforts by the government to access the data on this hard drive have failed,” even with assistance from a computer forensics expert, they wrote.
Then, the original database was permanently destroyed in August when Theranos moved out of its facility in Newark, Calif., the government alleged in its filing. “On or about August 31, 2018—three months after a federal grand jury issued a subpoena requesting a working copy of this database—the LIS was destroyed. The government has never been provided with the complete records contained in the LIS, nor been given the tools, which were available within the database, to search for such critical evidence as all Theranos blood tests with validation errors,” the filing read.
The January 11 filing was in response to a Theranos motion [doc-563] seeking to exclude evidence of “anecdotal test results.”
“The data disappeared. Defendant should be barred from arguing the government’s case is anecdotal when Theranos (and others) destroyed this data,” the prosecutors argued.
Furthermore, prosecutors wrote, “the government’s case is hardly ‘anecdotal.’ The reliability and accuracy problems in Theranos’ clinical lab were well-documented when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) investigated the lab, discovered the accuracy and reliability problems, and determined Theranos could not safely administer its tests on patients. Whistleblowers will also testify about Theranos’ accuracy and reliability problems. And patients themselves experienced these problems, receiving incorrect results that affected their treatment and deprived them of the benefit of the purportedly reliable blood tests for which they had paid.”
And Then There’s Her Lifestyle
Prosecutors also claimed in their filing that Holmes’ activities—which included “travel on private jets, stays in luxury hotels, and access to multiple assistants … [who] handled a range of non-business tasks for Defendant, including personal clothes and jewelry shopping, home decorating, food and grocery buying, and other items”—shows that Holmes was “funding an extravagant lifestyle … through company money,” CNBC reported.
And so, the saga of Theranos continues. Will Elizabeth Holmes succeed in her defense? Could a clinical laboratory phoenix bird rise from the ashes of this failed lab test company? Who knows? Probably not. But until there is a resolution, we will keep reporting on the case.
Former CEO Elizabeth Holmes now awaits March 9 court date on federal fraud charges that include reporting false medical laboratory test results on some patients
Clinical laboratory leaders have watched with keen interest the federal criminal proceedings against disgraced Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes, whose blood-testing company lost nearly $1 billion of investors’ money before dissolving in 2018.
In a recent CNBC interview, John Carreyrou, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigative journalist who first broke the Theranos story in 2015, contended that the once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup could have paid back investors on a pro-rata basis, but that the company opted to use its dwindling cash to challenge lawsuits.
“If you rewind to October 2015, when I finished, when I published my first investigative story on Theranos, the company still had $400 million in the bank and it could have called it quits then,” Carreyrou said in the interview. “And Elizabeth Holmes could have apologized to investors, to patients, to everyone she had misled and returned that money to shareholders on a pro-rata basis.”
Theranos Scandal Breaks Wide Open
Carreyrou’s nearly year-long Wall Street Journal investigation into Theranos helped bring down the venture capital darling that had achieved a $9 billion private valuation before crumbling under the weight of fraud allegations. Dark Daily and our sister publication The Dark Report (TDR) covered in detail the allegations against and investigation into the embattled blood test company in dozens of e-briefings and TDR articles starting in 2015.
In fact, The Dark Report was first to publish the news that Theranos had ceased using its finger-stick collection method in Phoenix as early as April 2015. (See TDR, “Theranos: Many Questions, But Very Few Answers,” April 20, 2015.) At that time, Theranos declined to respond to The Dark Report’s requests for comments.
Theranos had built its superstar reputation on the backs of a revolutionary finger-prick blood testing system, which Holmes promised could diagnosis diseases ranging from diabetes to cancer with just a few drops of blood. But an in-depth investigation into hoopla surrounding the company’s breakthrough technology by Carreyrou and other reporters at the Wall Street Journal revealed it was based on false test results and phony claims to investors and companies, such as Walgreens, which had planned to feature the technology in their retail clinics.
Elizabeth Holmes (above), founder and former CEO of now defunct Theranos, was considered a wunderkind when, as a 19-year-old Stanford University dropout, she founded Theranos in 2003. Early on, she attracted high-profile members to the Theranos board, including former US Secretary of State George Schultz, and cultivated comparisons to legendary Apple CEO Steve Jobs. But once the accuracy of Theranos’ capillary blood-test device fell under suspicion, Holmes’ fall from grace was swift, as clinical laboratories learned from multiple Dark Daily e-briefings and articles in The Dark Report going back to 2015. (Photo copyright: The New York Times.)
In 2016, Theranos received sanctions from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which included revocation of the company’s CLIA certificate and sanctions against Holmes and other company officials that prohibited them from owning or operating a medical laboratory for two years. Soon afterward, Theranos laid off 340 workers, closed its laboratory operations, and shuttered its wellness centers to “focus on an initiative to create miniature medical testing machines,” the New York Times reported.
When Theranos was finally dissolved in September 2018, Carreyrou reported that the company had an estimated $5 million in cash to distribute to unsecured creditors. All told, Carreyrou estimates Theranos’ investors, which included such big names as News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Bechtel Group Chairman Riley Bechtel, and US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, lost nearly $1 billion.
Today, Holmes is preparing to stand trial on a dozen federal wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges at the US District Court in San Jose, Calif., where jury selection is slated to start on March 9, 2021, amid COVID-19 pandemic safety precautions.
According to the Mercury News, Holmes faces maximum penalties of 20 years in prison and a $2.75 million fine, plus possible restitution. Carreyrou does not expect Holmes to seek a plea deal.
“I think that the chances of that are pretty unlikely. From what I hear, she’s telling her friends and her entourage that she’s actually looking forward to her day in court and she thinks that the real story—her version of the story—will come out at trial,” he told CNBC. “And so, she’s actually putting on a cheerful face with people she knows, and people have seen her recently and are saying that she’s looking forward to see this go to a jury.”
While the final chapter of this story will be written by a federal court jury, clinical laboratory leaders likely will want Holmes to face maximum penalties if found guilty of all charges. The deceptive scientific and business practices Theranos allegedly engaged in caused many headaches for the clinical lab directors of hospitals and health networks as their CEOs asked why the “cheap and fast” Theranos testing system could not be used instead of traditional, more expensive testing methods.
Theranos also financially damaged investors who might otherwise have gained capital and continued to invest in more credible startups of diagnostic companies and clinical laboratories.
The federal trial, now set to begin in March 2021, could become a media spectacle given the marquee names on the witness list
Clinical laboratories following the federal criminal proceedings against Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes will have to wait until next year for the case to go to trial. When it does, it could become a media spectacle given the list of prominent witnesses who may be called as government witnesses.
The names, according to a letter that prosecutors sent April 3 to Holmes’ defense team, include former US Cabinet Secretaries Henry Kissinger and James “Mad Dog” Mattis, both of whom sat on the board of the ill-fated diagnostics company. Prosecutors may also call media mogul Rupert Murdoch to testify, the (San Jose) Mercury News reported.
To Fingerstick or Not to Fingerstick
As readers of Dark Daily will recall, Holmes claimed that Theranos had developed ground-breaking blood-testing technology that allowed for a range of blood tests using only 25 to 50 microliters of blood drawn by fingerstick rather than conventional venipuncture. Use of capillary specimens for many clinical laboratory tests was regularly touted by Holmes as one of Theranos’ technology secrets and a key to its plans to disrupt the clinical laboratory marketplace.
But then a series of articles by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in the fall of 2015 revealed serious problems with Theranos’ management and technology, eventually leading to the company’s downfall.
Charges of Fraud
According to documents filed with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) US Attorney’s Office Northern District of California, on June 15, 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and Theranos president Ramesh Balwani with 11 counts related to wire fraud. The government alleges one scheme to defraud investors and another to defraud doctors and patients. The defendants each face up to 20 years in prison for each count plus fines and restitution. They have pleaded not guilty.
“Holmes and Balwani used advertisements and solicitations to encourage and induce doctors and patients to use Theranos’ blood testing laboratory services, even though, according to the government, the defendants knew Theranos was not capable of consistently producing accurate and reliable results for certain blood tests,” the government stated in an announcement of the indictment. “It is further alleged that the tests performed on Theranos technology were likely to contain inaccurate and unreliable results.”
Prosecutors later added a 12th felony charge tied to a patient’s blood-test result, as Dark Daily reported in July. That charge was later withdrawn and then restored amid legal wrangling about the composition of the grand jury.
The start of the trial has been delayed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Jury selection is now set to begin March 9, 2021, the East Bay Times reported.
Elizabeth Holmes, founder and former CEO of Theranos, is seen above with her attorneys exiting the Robert F. Peckham US Federal Court in San Jose, California. Jury selection for her trial will begin on March 9, 2021. She has been charged with two counts of conspiracy and nine counts of wire fraud, CNBC reported. (Photo copyright: CNBC.)
Witnesses for the Prosecution
Dark Daily has reviewed the April 3 letter sent by prosecutors to the defense team. It lists witnesses and documents that may be used as evidence in the case. The defense attorneys included the letter in a June 30 filing indicating that they will seek to exclude or limit much of the prosecution evidence.
The April 3 letter “did not identify the particular acts Ms. Holmes supposedly committed and continued to rely on vague themes,” they wrote. “It did not disclose what evidence the government would introduce outside its case in chief. And it did not provide any explanation of which particular acts the hundreds of witness statements and the thousands of pages of discovery it identified would support.”
One section, with the heading “False and misleading representations made to Theranos’ Board of Directors,” includes the following former board members as possible witnesses:
William Perry, US Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration.
Robert Shapiro, an attorney best known as a member of the defense team in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
George Shultz, US Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration and US Secretary of the Treasury in the Nixon Administration.
The letter also indicates that some of these former board members could be called to testify about alleged efforts by defendants Holmes and Balwani to conceal a romantic relationship, as well as alleged efforts by the defendants to avoid subjecting Theranos technology to “meaningful comparative tests.”
Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp., is one of six potential witnesses who may be called to testify about “threats, influence, or vilification of journalists in response to negative coverage with Theranos.” News Corp. is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal.
Another section relates to alleged “false and misleading representations made to journalists.” It references articles published in Wired, Fortune, CNN, The Economist, Medscape, and The New Yorker.
Other sections of the letter offer a broader picture of the government’s case against Holmes and Balwani. It lists potential witnesses and documents related to the following subjects, though some names have been redacted:
False and misleading representations directed at insured patients.
False and misleading representations directed at doctors.
False and misleading representations made to Walgreens.
False and misleading representations made to Safeway.
Restricting access to laboratory areas within Theranos.
Harassing, threatening, or otherwise influencing doctors or patients who had negative experiences with Theranos.
Blaming and vilifying competing companies.
Threatening or intimidating employees and former employees.
False and misleading representations made to FDA, CMS, CDPH, and other regulatory organizations.
Violations of industry standards and government regulations or rules regarding research and development procedures, medical devices, and clinical laboratory practices.
Altering or tampering with third-party medical devices.
Obtaining personal benefit from position at Theranos.
One interesting aspect to the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is that the clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology professions were never fooled by all the publicity and news coverage of the company. Pathologists and clinical laboratory scientists knew that, over the 10-plus years of Theranos’ existence, its scientific team had never published any research findings of significance in a respected, peer-reviewed journal.
That was strong evidence that Theranos had no new break-through, disruptive, diagnostic technologies that would allow it to perform multiple tests on a single drop of blood that was collected by a fingerstick procedure.
Since the collapse of Theranos and the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes, many in the clinical laboratory profession have hoped that federal prosecutors would prosecute her under the full extent of the law.
Holmes’ lawyers maintain the former CEO of Theranos has not waived right to be charged by indictment and therefore argue the added charge is ‘unconstitutional’ and should be dismissed
Clinical laboratory leaders needing a break from nonstop coronavirus pandemic news will be interested to learn a familiar name is again making headlines. Disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes—who went from paper billionaire to criminal defendant—is now facing a 12th felony fraud charge, with the additional count tied to a patient’s blood-test result.
Holmes founded the blood testing company in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University. Though Theranos reached a peak valuation of $9 billion in 2015, according to Investopedia its unicorn-startup status began unraveling that same year when a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) investigation exposed the company’s massive deceptions and questionable practices related to its finger-prick blood-testing technology.
Holmes and codefendant Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, former Theranos President and Chief Operating Officer, claimed Theranos had developed a medical technology that could run thousands of clinical laboratory tests using a finger-prick blood test that would return results in two hours and at a price that was 50% of Medicare’s fees for lab tests.
sanctions from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, investor lawsuits, consumer lawsuits, and a settlement with Walgreens over claims about Theranos’ Edison portable blood analyzer, CNBC reported. Theranos ceased operations in September 2018.
Elizabeth Holmes is seen above entering the Northern District of California courthouse with attorneys Kevin Downey (left) and Lance Wade (right) of the law firm Williams and Connolly. (Photo copyright: Jason Doiy/ALM)
The 12th Felony Charge Against Elizabeth Holmes
Earlier in 2018, David L. Anderson, US Attorney for the Northern District of California indicted Holmes and Balwani on 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Now, an additional wire fraud charge has been added to that list. The 12th felony charge was included in Superseding Information federal prosecutors filed with the court on May 8. Superseding Information is a charging document that does not require a grand jury proceeding.
In the filing, the latest allegation of fraud is alleged to have occurred on October 12, 2015, in the states of California and Arizona and is described as a “telephone call from Patient B.B. to Theranos regarding laboratory blood test results.”
The Superseding Information states: “Knowing that the accuracy and reliability of Theranos test results was questionable and suspect, Holmes and Balwani oversaw the electronic wiring of test results to patients, including persons known to the Attorney for the United States as Patients B.B, E.T., and M.E. These wires … travelled between one state and another.”
The amended charging document also more than doubles the length of time the pair are alleged to have conspired to defraud investors, adds additional categories of alleged victims, and revises the dates of two of the other prior wire fraud charges, changing them from 2014 to 2015.
“In particular, Holmes and Balwani knew that Theranos was not capable of consistently producing accurate and reliable results for certain blood tests, including but not limited to bicarbonate, calcium, chloride, cholesterol/HDL/LDL, gonorrhea, glucose, HbA1c, hCG, HIV, LDH, potassium, PSA, PT/INR, sodium, testosterone, TSH, vitamin D (25-OH), and all assays conducted on Theranos’ TSPU [Theranos Sample Processing Unit] version 3.5, including estradiol, prolactin, SHBG, thyroxine (T4/free T4), triiodothyronine, and vitamin B-12,” the Superseding Information states.
According to Law.com, Holmes’ lawyers at Williams and Connolly responded by filing a motion to dismiss the Superseding Information. Because grand jury proceedings have been suspended in the Northern District of California since mid-March due to COVID-19, they argue that Holmes, who hasn’t waived the right to be charged by grand jury indictment, is unable to be arraigned. They maintain the prosecutors’ actions violate her rights under the US Constitution and Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 7, which requires crimes punishable by a prison sentence of more than a year to be charged by indictment unless the defendant waives that right.
“Because Ms. Holmes does not waive prosecution by indictment, convening an arraignment on this information would be pointless and a waste of the Court’s time because no arraignment could actually occur,” her lawyers wrote in their motion. “The Court should dismiss this unconstitutional information without scheduling an arraignment.”
On May 26, prosecutors filed their opposition to the defendants’ motion to dismiss. They maintained that US District Judge Edward Davila should either deny the defense request outright or hold off ruling until a “reasonable time after the Court lifts the suspension of grand jury hearings.”
They wrote, “Defendants’ claim that an information must be ‘dismissed immediately’ because it is not the constitutionally required indictment proves too much,” adding, “Criminal charges are initiated all the time through preliminary proceedings like a complaint or an information. They are not ‘patently unconstitutional merely because a defendant has indicated she will not waive her right to be prosecuted by indictment.”
COVID-19 Delays Court Proceedings
Holmes’ trial originally was set to begin in August, but the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the case being postponed to October 27, reported CNBC. According to Davila, “We’re in unchartered waters and unchartered territories. We need to make sure the environment is safe for all parties, including the jury that’s called to hear the matter.”
The Theranos scandal continues to serve as a reminder to clinical laboratory leaders
and pathology groups that questionable or deceptive business practices eventually will draw the attention of federal regulators, prosecutors, and consumers, and that the penalty for fraud can be severe. The frustration for medical laboratory professionals and pathologists is that it generally takes years for federal investigators to bring charges against such frauds.
