Georg Preidler was charged with fraud in connection with his testimony in the Operation Adelrath doping investigation, according to a report by the Austrian News Agency.

Preidler admitted that his blood was drawn by Mark Schmidt, a physician accused of giving blood transfusions to numerous athletes, but denied that he was re-transfused.

According to the Associated Press, the Innsbruck Prosecutor's Office announced that it had charged the 29-year-old with "serious [sports] fraud" in Innsbruck District Court. Pridler, however, still has two weeks to appeal. If convicted, Plydler could be sentenced to six months to five years in prison.

According to APA, prosecutor Thomas Willam announced that Pridler is accused of "regularly blood doping and taking growth hormone, beginning with the Giro d'Italia in the spring of 2017, until his doping confession."

In 2017, Pridler signed with Groupama-FDJ after helping Tom Dumoulin win the Giro d'Italia as part of Team Sunweb; in 2018, he worked for Thibaut Pinot in the Giro, but was eliminated before the final stage after Pinot fell ill.

Preidler then competed in the Tour de Pollogne, where he won his first WorldTour stage and finished sixth overall, and was selected to represent Austria at the World Championships. He finished 36th in the time trial and was eliminated from the road race.

In March, when Operation Adelrath broke out, the UCI imposed a provisional suspension on Pridler and fellow Austrian Stefan Denifle, who admitted involvement in a blood doping scheme. Denifle was suspended for four years and will not be eligible to compete until March 2023.

According to the prosecutor's office, Pridler was contractually obligated to comply with the anti-doping rules set by the UCI and the race organizers because he competed in the UCI Road World Championships in Innsbruck. Failure to comply was a criminal fraud and damages were estimated at 250,000 euros.

Operation Aderlass emerged in late February 2019, when five Nordic ski athletes were arrested before the Nordic Ski World Championships in Seefeld, Austria. One of the athletes was caught performing autotransfusions in his room. The investigation led to the discovery of approximately 40 blood bags in a garage in Eckfurt, Germany, associated with Schmidt.

Schmidt had previously been the team doctor for Gerolsteiner and Milram, and was acquitted of aiding doping after Austrian Bernard Kohl tested positive for EPO in 2008.

Denifle is the only road cyclist banned in the case, but the UCI also imposed a four-year ban on mountain biker Christina Colman-Forstner.

The case was alarming for anti-doping in cycling, not only because it was similar in procedure, if not in scale, to the 2006 Operación Puerto case. In Operación Puerto, five times as many athletes were involved as were suspected in Aderlus.

After Operación Puerto, the UCI instituted biological passports as a way to combat blood doping.

However, Denifle, who signed with the CCC team for 2019 before terminating his contract before the start of the season, saw no "red flags" on his biological passport, according to team manager Jim Ochowicz.

A 2018 Danish study showed that while autotransfusions of as little as 135 ml may produce detectable performance gains in athletes, they likely do not trigger further investigation into the value of the Biological Passport.

Researchers are working on more robust methods to detect autotransfusions.