In June 2026, a rumor spread that two foreign-born researchers employed at the National Institutes of Health had been charged with smuggling the monkeypox virus into the U.S.
The claim appeared on X, where far-right influencer Laura Loomer said one of the two was from Cameroon and alleged the NIH was "covering up" that foreign-born scientists at a high-security laboratory in Colorado were smuggling "lethal pathogens" into the country (archived):
The claim further appeared on X and Reddit, without providing more context.
It was true that the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of Michigan announced it had charged two foreign-born researchers with smuggling the monkeypox virus into the U.S. on June 2.
We reached out to the office and to the NIH asking for more details about the charges and we will update this report should they respond.
The DOJ statement said it had charged Dutch citizen Vincent Munster, chief of the virus ecology section at the Laboratory of Virology of the Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, with smuggling the virus and lying to federal authorities. Officials also filed the same charges against Claude Kwe, who works in Munster's lab as a research fellow and is a citizen of Cameroon. The two appear in a photograph on Munster's bio page, along with other members of the research team.
According to the announcement, the two attempted to conceal 113 glass vials they were carrying in coolers from Customs and Border Patrol as they entered the U.S. at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport after their flight from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, in January 2026. (Loomer incorrectly said they had come from Congo, which borders the Republic of Congo.)
"Munster and Kwe falsely told CBP officers that the black case contained diagnostics and testing equipment," the statement read. "But subsequent investigation by CBP and FBI agents revealed that the case actually contained 113 vials in Styrofoam coolers."
The announcement also said the FBI had tested the contents of 20 of those vials, finding that some contained the "deactivated" monkeypox virus. Inactivated viruses cannot replicate inside the body and cause illness, though they can be used for research purposes; for example, for vaccine development or as controls in laboratories for studying and diagnosing the diseases they cause.
Munster's bio page indicates that he and his team have published several research papers on the monkeypox virus, including one that identified strains in circulation in the Republic of Congo. Another paper, whose principal author is Kwe, examined the stability of the monkeypox virus in various body fluids, and techniques for decontamination. A third looked at the replication of a particular strain of the virus and its resistance to drugs. In other words, the two have documented their research into such viruses frequently in the last few years.
"These NIH experts apparently broke our laws by smuggling viral pathogens on a packed commercial airplane from an outbreak in the Republic of Congo. Let that sink in," the statement quoted U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon Jr. as saying.
(The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said an outbreak of mpox, the disease caused by the virus, occurred in Congo in 2024 and 2025 and spread to neighboring countries.)
According to a report in Science, Munster and Kwe pleaded not guilty to the charges against them. The report also cited Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, as saying that "inactivated monkeypox viruses routinely are used as a control in diagnostic tests or to develop the assays."
We have reached out to Rasmussen to ask if, provided the lab would use the viral samples for diagnostics test, it was inaccurate to say that the vials containing inactivated virus could constitute "diagnostics and testing equipment," as Munster and Kwe allegedly told CBP upon inspection at the Detroit airport. We will update this story if we learn more.
For further reading, Snopes examined the claim that 11 scientists connected to sensitive research in the U.S. had disappeared.