A Chinese researcher who smuggled a crop-killing fungusdubbed “vomitoxin” into the US has been deported, officials announced Monday.
Yunqing Jian, 33, who once worked for the University of Michigan, pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to smuggle the biological pathogen into the States, reportedly to continue researching it, and then lying to the FBI about her actions. She was sentenced to time served — then booted.
Chinese researcher Yunqing Jian has been deported after she admitted to a scheme to smuggle a crop-killing fungus into the US to allegedly study.AP
“Yunqing Jian, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, pleaded guilty to charges of smuggling a DANGEROUS biological pathogen into our country and then lying about it to FBI agents, and was DEPORTED,” Bongino wrote.
“The FBI will not stand by and allow our foreign adversaries to exploit our top-notch university facilities in furtherance of their agendas.”
Jian was arrested in June for allegedly plotting with her boyfriend Zungyong Liu to bring into the US the fungus, called Fusarium graminearum, which causes “head blight” that kills wheat, barley, maize and rice.
The fungus is nicknamed “vomitoxin” for its effect also causing livestock to throw up. It can cause other issues, too, such diarrhea, stomach pain, headaches and fevers in both animals and people.
Jian, a loyal member of the Chinese Communist Party, had received funding from her home country to research the fungus, prosecutors said.
Jian and her boyfriend allegedly plotted to bring fungus Fusarium graminearum into the US to study at the University of Michigan.US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Liu, 34, worked at a Chinese university that was studying the pathogen when he brought some in his backpack on a flight into the US, through the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, so he could research it further at the University of Michigan where Jian was working.
But Liu was turned away at the airport in July and sent back to China when he was found to be carrying a suspicious red plant material in his backpack.
Messages the couple exchanged in 2024 suggest that Jian was already working with the fungus at the Michigan lab before Liu was caught trying to come in with it.
The fungus can kill crops and make livestock and humans sick.US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
The fungus grows in the US in places in the East and Upper Midwest and is responsible for an estimated loss of $200 million to $400 million in destroyed agriculture each year.
It’s not uncommon for researchers to bring plants, animals and strains of fungus from other countries into the US but they have to get a permit first.
Jian’s lawyer, Norman Zalkind, told The Post Monday that his client was sent back to China two days after she entered her guilty plea and said the feds blew her crimes out of proportion.
“They shouldn’t have brought these kinds of cases, they are not serious cases,” Zalkind said.
“The administration made them much more serious than they really are. They said their research was really harmful to the US, but it wasn’t.”
At least four other Chinese nationals have been similarly charged with trying to sneak into the country biological materials for research at the University of Michigan.
A powerful US House committee and the Treasury Department both launched investigations into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s involvement in a “massive fraud” scheme that involved Somali immigrantsbilking more than $1 billion from taxpayers, they revealed Monday.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told The Post that his panel “will conduct a thorough investigation into Governor Walz’s failure to safeguard taxpayer dollars” as a result.
“Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was warned about massive fraud in a pandemic food-aid program for children, yet he failed to act. Instead, whistleblowers who raised concerns faced retaliation,” Comer said.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) told The Post that his panel “will conduct a thorough investigation into Governor Walz’s failure to safeguard taxpayer dollars” as a result.Michael Brochstein/ZUMA / SplashNews.com
“Because of Governor Walz’s negligence, criminals — including Somali terrorists — stole nearly $1 billion from the program while children suffered.”
As chairman of the powerful GOP-led panel, Comer can issue subpoenas and refer alleged crimes to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution.
The DOJ has already convicted 59 fraudsters in the scheme.
Also on Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted on X that he had instructed his investigators to dig into how “the feckless mismanagement of the Biden Administration and Governor Tim Walz” allowed tax dollars to be funneled to Al-Shabaab terrorists.
The revelations about the scale of the $1 billion fraud for a COVID-era food relief program are new — as is the claim that some of the money flowed back to the Somali terrorist organization.
But House Republicans have been onto Walz and Minnesota over its leaky aid programs for months.
Last year, Republicans on the House Education and Workforce Committee issued a subpoena to Walz for records, though it’s unclear what information — if any — his office provided. A rep for that panel didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As chairman of the powerful GOP-led panel, Comer can issue subpoenas and refer potential crimes to the Department of Justice, which has already convicted 59 fraudsters linked to the Feeding Our Future scheme.AP
The House Oversight probe comes following prosecutions of 78 scammers, often from Somalia, who took Minnesota taxpayers’ money as part of what the feds have called the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal.
The ploy, according to prosecutors, involved funneling money from state social services coffers — including at the Department of Human Services and Department of Education — to the nonprofit Feeding Our Future and other organizations to ostensibly feed school children.
Instead, their “depraved and brazen” plot used the funds to splurge on the lavish lifestyles of the nonprofit’s workers — including for brand new fancy cars and real estate holdings as far away as Turkey and Kenya — between April 2020 and January 2022, prosecutors said.
The House Oversight Committee is investigating a “massive fraud” scheme under Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that bilked more than $1 billion from taxpayers meant for food aid during the COVID-19 pandemic.REUTERS
The FBI raided the fake nonprofit that same month and it later dissolved. Many of the reimbursement claims from the organizations were sent to state departments and then on to federal agencies such as the USDA.
A whistleblower X account purporting to be 500 employees with Minnesota’s Department of Human Services slammed Walz on Saturday for being “100% responsible” for the fraud.
“We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response,” their account posted on Saturday.
“Because of Governor Walz’s negligence, criminals — including Somali terrorists — stole nearly $1 billion from the program while children suffered,” Comer said, referencing payments made to al-Shabaab terrorists.AFP via Getty Images
“Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. Instead of partnership, we got the full weight of retaliation,” added the account, which was apparently suspended on X Monday.
“It’s scary, isolating and left us wondering who we can turn to.”
The employees claimed that Walz had weakened safeguards, including at the Office of the Legislative Auditor, during the episode.
The FBI raided Feeding Our Future in January 2022 and it later dissolved.Star Tribune via Getty Images
In a June 2024 audit, that office found that the Minnesota Department of Education had “created opportunities for fraud” and maintained “inadequate oversight” during the roughly two-year period it was paying for the fake feeding of schoolchildren.
Walz has boasted that he took “responsibility for putting people in jail” who were connected to the fraud — but also hit Trump in comments to NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that “there’s a big difference between fraud and corruption.”
Fraudsters tried to bribe a juror on a Feeding Our Future fraud case in June 2024.AP
“And corruption is something he knows about,” the Minnesota governor said of the 47th president.
“Donald Trump: Deflect, demonize, come up with no solutions. He’s not going to help fix anything on fraud,” Walz told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday. “My God, there’s a big difference between fraud and corruption. And corruption is something he knows about.”
The 61-year-old governor, who is currently running for a third term in office, told the Minnesota Reformer that he was aware of suspicious activity by the nonprofit as early as November 2020. Minnesota’s Department of Education first moved to stop payments to Feeding Our Future at the time.
Walz later awarded a fraudster from another nonprofit linked to the scheme with an “Outstanding Refugee Award” in July 2021.AP
But Walz let the payments flow again after Feeding Our Future sued the department for alleged racial discrimination.
When federal indictments began being handed up, Walz further told media outlets that he attempted to put a stop to the fraud in April 2021, before blaming a Minnesota judge for ordering the funds to continue flowing.
That jurist, Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann, fired back in a rare statement that none of those payments were made due to a court order and were, in fact, “made voluntarily” after Feeding Our Future claimed it had resolved “serious deficiencies” that caused the suspension in state spending.
Walz later awarded a fraudster from another nonprofit linked to the scheme with an “Outstanding Refugee Award” in July 2021.
Reps for Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Shopifyjust weathered its worst possible timing for a platform outage. The e-commerce giant went down Monday morning, cutting off thousands of merchants from processing transactions during Cyber Monday - the year's biggest online shopping day. The company has since resolved the authentication issues that locked merchants out of their stores and point-of-sale systems.
Shopify just lived through every e-commerce platform's nightmare scenario. The company's authentication systems failed this morning, cutting off merchants from their stores and payment processing capabilities right as Cyber Monday shoppers flooded online retailers with deal-hunting traffic. The timing couldn't have been worse for a platform that processes over 10% of all U.S. e-commerce transactions. Reports started flooding in around 6:45 AM Pacific Time, with merchants unable to log into their Shopify accounts or access point-of-sale systems. For store owners counting on Cyber Monday to drive fourth-quarter revenue, the outage meant watching potential sales slip away during the year's most critical shopping window. The cascading impact hit both online storefronts and physical retail locations using Shopify's POS systems. Downdetector logged approximately 4,000 outage reports as frustrated merchants and customers encountered login failures and transaction processing errors. The scale suggests thousands of businesses were affected across Shopify's merchant base. According to Shopify's status page, the company identified the root cause as problems with its login authentication flow - the system that verifies merchant credentials and grants access to accounts. This explains why both web-based admin panels and physical POS terminals experienced simultaneous failures. The company worked through the morning to restore service, with engineers focusing on the authentication bottleneck that was preventing legitimate users from accessing their accounts. By early afternoon, Shopify confirmed it had implemented a fix and was monitoring recovery across its platform. The company's status updates indicated that normal service was returning, though they warned merchants to expect longer wait times for customer support as teams handled the backlog of outage-related inquiries. For merchants, the outage represents lost revenue during a day when many retailers generate significant portions of their annual online sales. Cyber Monday typically drives billions in e-commerce transactions, with shoppers actively seeking deals and making purchase decisions. Every minute offline translated to missed opportunities and frustrated customers. The incident highlights the critical infrastructure role that platforms like Shopify play in modern retail. When authentication systems fail, the ripple effects extend far beyond technical inconvenience - they directly impact merchant revenue and customer experience during peak shopping periods. The company's rapid response and transparent communication through status updates helped merchants understand the scope and timeline for resolution. However, the outage raises questions about system redundancy and failover capabilities during high-traffic periods like major shopping holidays.
Platform outages during peak shopping events underscore the delicate balance between handling massive traffic spikes and maintaining system reliability. For Shopify, quick resolution was essential - but the incident serves as a reminder that authentication systems need robust redundancy when millions of merchants depend on them for their livelihoods. As online commerce continues growing, platform operators face increasing pressure to ensure their infrastructure can handle both planned traffic surges and unexpected technical failures without disrupting the businesses that rely on them.
