DETROIT, MI – A Chinese scholar at University of Michigan and her boyfriend worked to smuggle a biological pathogen into the United States, according to a federal criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday.
The FBI charged doctoral student Yunqing Jian and her boyfriend Zunyong Liu with conspiracy to defraud the United States, smuggling goods into the country, visa fraud and making false statements to investigators, according to the June 2 complaint made in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
The agent who filed the complaint wrote about how both Jian and Liu were studying a pathogen that could target food crops. Liu, also a Chinese national, was caught on July 27 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport illegally smuggling the pathogen into the country, the agent reported…