https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/06/03/researchers-smuggled-in-a-dangerous-biological-pathogen-guess-where-theyre-from-n4940416
United States Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon, Jr., along with Cheyvoryea Gibson, a special agent in charge with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Detroit Division and Marty C. Raybon, Director of Field Operations with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, announced on Tuesday that two people had been “charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements, and visa fraud.”
According to the announcement, the two were smuggling “a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon. This noxious fungus causes ‘head blight,’ a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year. Fusarium graminearum’s toxins cause vomiting, liver damage, and reproductive defects in humans and livestock.”
Who were the two people, you ask? They were 33-year-old Yunqing Jian and her boyfriend, 34-year-old Zunyong Liu of China.
Jian is a a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and has been working at the University of Michigan’s Molecular Plant-Microbe Interaction Laboratory since 2023. Lui works at a Chinese university where he conducts research on the same pathogen.
Last year, Liu, who apparently came to the U.S. on a B2 tourist visa, brought the materials in question, and when asked about them by agents, lied and said he had no idea what they were and that they’d been planted in his bag. Later, he changed his story and said he “hid the samples in his backpack because he knew there were restrictions on the importation of the materials,” and he just wanted to come work with his girlfriend. Sure.
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Not only has Jian reportedly “received Chinese government funding for her work on this pathogen in China,” but she also allegedly owns electronics that “contain information describing her membership in and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party.”
FBI director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital that the situation “demonstrates a serious national security threat to America’s food supply.”