The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday it has charged Silicon Valley blood-testing company Theranos, its current CEO Elizabeth Holmes, and former President Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani with massive investor fraud.

In a press release, the SEC said the defendants raised more than $700 million from investors “through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company's technology, business, and financial performance.”

Theranos and Holmes have agreed to settle the fraud charges against them, according to the SEC. Holmes has agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty, be barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years, return the remaining 18.9 million shares she obtained during the fraud, and relinquish her voting control of Theranos, it added.

In a call with reporters, Steven Peikin, co-director of the SEC's Enforcement Division, called the remedy against Holmes “pretty unique.” He also said forcing her to give up control of the company she founded was “particularly meaningful … in Silicon Valley, where the founders of startup companies obviously value the concept of control here.”

Peikin added it is a “good example” of the types of remedies the SEC would seek in similar fraud actions, and consistent with the enforcement principles it laid out near the end of 2017.

The SEC action is the latest twist in Theranos' long fall from grace, which was set off by a string of investigative articles published by The Wall Street Journal in 2015 and 2016 detailing the company's struggles to deliver on the promises of its blood-testing technology.

The separate SEC complaints against Theranos, Holmes and Balwani, respectively, include allegations the company misled investors into thinking it was able to run some 200 blood tests using a small, proprietary analyzer when, in fact, it could run only 12, and ran others using modified, commercially available devices.

The agency also alleges Balwani and Holmes told multiple investors that Theranos' technology had been deployed by the Department of Defense in the battlefield, in Afghanistan, and on military medevac helicopters. In fact, the two were aware, or were “reckless in not knowing,” that this was false, the SEC alleges.

“While Theranos' technology was used in a DOD burn study, it was never deployed by the DOD in the battlefield, in Afghanistan, or on medevac helicopters,” both complaints note. The actions were filed in federal court in San Jose, California. Theranos is based in Palo Alto, California.

Theranos is represented by Thomas Strickland and Christopher Davies of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, while Holmes is represented by John Dwyer at Cooley. Balwani is represented by Jeffrey Coopersmith at Davis Wright Tremaine, the SEC said.

“We believe the enforcement action by the SEC is unwarranted,” Coopersmith said in a statement. “Sunny Balwani accurately represented Theranos to investors to the best of his ability. He believed in the potential and mission of the company and its technology to promote transparency and benefit people by empowering them with access to their own health care information at a low cost.”

In a statement, Theranos noted neither the company nor Holmes admitted or denied any wrongdoing under the settlement. “The company is pleased to be bringing this matter to a close and looks forward to advancing its technology,” the company's directors said.

Peikin told reporters the SEC had not sought to penalize Theranos itself because the company was essentially a “two-person operation” during the relevant period, and because doing so may have only further harmed investors. Holmes and Balwani “were responsible for all of the misconduct that's alleged in our complaint,” he said.