A Chinese researcher allegedly tried to smuggle biological materials into the US from Wuhan and lied to the feds about the secretive scheme.
Chengxuan Han was arrested Sunday after landing at the Detroit Metropolitan airport on a flight from Shanghai, according to charging documents. She was charged with smuggling goods into the US and making false statements.
Han is the third Chinese scientist to be charged with smuggling illegal biological materials into Michigan in recent weeks.
Yunqing Jian, 33, and her boyfriend Zunyong Liu, 34, were caught last year allegedly trying to smuggle samples of a dangerous crop-killing fungus into the US, the FBI said. Jian, a Communist Party loyalist and lab researcher at the University of Michigan who received Chinese government funding for her work, was charged last week in a ploat the national security insiders called “an attack on US food supply.”
Upon Han’s arrival to the US, border officers discovered Han sent four packages that “contained biological material related to round worms” from China, according to court documents
The packages, which were sent in both 2024 and 2025, were addressed to individuals associated with a laboratory at the University of Michigan.
However, Han lied to officers and said she didn’t send packages to members of the Michigan lab, according to court documents. She also claimed the packages contained plastic cups, rather than petri dishes.
When the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations grilled Han, she admitted to shipping the biological materials to the lab from her research as a Ph.D. student from the College of Life Science and Technology in the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, according to court documents.
Investigators also discovered that Han deleted the content of her electronic device three days before she landed in the US.
“The alleged smuggling of biological materials by Chengxuan Han is a direct threat to public safety and national security, and it severely compromises the integrity of our nation’s research institutions,” said Cheyvoryea Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Detroit Field Office, in a statement Monday.
“I applaud the relentless efforts of the FBI Detroit Counterintelligence Task Force, working in close coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Field Operations and ICE Homeland Security Investigations Detroit. The FBI in Michigan will aggressively pursue anyone who seeks to harm our country and will deploy every available resource to defend the United States and protect our communities,” Gibson added.
Han was denied a visa to travel to the US on two separate occasions in March. In one of her attempts to obtain a visa, Han “could not clearly answer basic questions about herself or her research,” according to court documents.
Wuhan is the central Chinese city where COVID-19 emerged before it spread into a global pandemic.
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