Overview
- The Justice Department on Tuesday filed a federal criminal complaint accusing Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe of conspiring to smuggle viral material into the United States and making false statements to investigators.
- The travelers, who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Jan. 25, 2026, told Customs officers their large black case held diagnostics but agents later found 113 vials packed in Styrofoam coolers.
- Laboratory testing of 20 vials so far showed 17 contained deactivated monkeypox virus, one contained chickenpox virus, and two contained human DNA, according to federal officials.
- Munster is chief of the Virus Ecology Section at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratory and Kwe is a research fellow there; each faces up to five years in prison if convicted and the allegations remain unproven.
- The case focuses scrutiny on biosecurity and oversight for researchers who work in high‑containment labs and return from outbreak zones and it could prompt tighter transport and approval rules for biological samples.